Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO of Amazon and become the Executive Chairman of the Board. Jeff Bezos will be succeeded by Andy Jassy as new CEO.
“I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Jeff Bezos said.
In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives, Jeff Bezos said in a note to employees.
Jeff Bezos said: “As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have.”
Amazon shares were up less than 1% in after-hours trading.
Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 and has a MBA from Harvard Business School, according to the company’s website. He founded Amazon Web Services (AWS) and grew it to a cloud platform used by millions, the company said.
Tom Johnson, chief transformation officer at Mindshare Worldwide, said Jassy’s promotion underscored the importance of web services to Amazon’s future. “Jassy’s background in steering AWS shows just how top of mind those services are to Amazon’s business strategy. It’ll be interesting to see how that affects their strategy and balancing that priority with a growing ad business and the commerce behemoth,” he said.
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