Jeff Bezos steps down as CEO of Amazon, entrusting it to Andy Jassy

By: Ashwathy Nair

Bezos will switch to the role of executive chair in the third quarter.
Will be engaged in important Amazon initiatives.

On Tuesday, the founder of Amazon, Jeff Bezos stated that later this year he would be standing aside as chief executive of the company that he built from a startup to now being one of the most valuable companies in the world.

The richest person in the world based on his Amazon stake, Bezos stated that he will be switching to the role of executive chair in the third quarter by entrusting the position of CEO to Andy Jassy, who heads Amazon Web Services.

The news regarding this came out as the company reported a blowout holiday quarter with profits that is more than doubling to $7.2 billion and revue shooting 44 per cent to $125.6 billion as the pandemic lockdown instigated online sales to explode around the globe.

Bezos stated in a letter to Amazon employees that he will be “staying engaged in important Amazon initiatives” but would turn towards philanthropic initiatives, including his Day One Fund and Bezos Earth Fund, and other space exploration and journalism business ventures.

Bezos stated that “I’ve never had more liveliness, and this is not about retiring”.

“I’m super passionate about thinking of the impact that I think these organizations can have.”

In the year 1994, Bezos (57), created Amazon in his garage and went on to expand it into a colossus dominating online retail, with music and television streaming operations, food, cloud computing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and more.

Other businesses of Bezos include The Washington Post newspaper along with the private space firm Blue Origin.

In the year 1997, Jassy, his successor, joined Amazon as a marketing manager and created AWS, the company’s cloud services division, which was one of the tech giant’s most lucrative but least-known divisions, in 2003.

In a statement, Bezos stated that “Inside the company, Andy is well known and he has been at Amazon almost as long as I have” “Andy will be an exemplary performer, and he has my full confidence”.

“Right now, Amazon is seen to be at its most innovative ever, making it an optimal moment for this transition,” he said.

As of Tuesday, the market value of Amazon was around $1.69 trillion, a tenfold increase from a decade ago, making it one of the most valuable in the world.

The stake of Bezos gives him an estimated $196 billion worth of personal wealth, marginally more than Elon Musk, who briefly captured the title of the richest person in the world.