Andy Jassy to Takeover as Amazon CEO as Jeff Bezos Resigns in Q3 2021

The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Amazon Inc, Jeff Bezos, has announced plans to resign his position as the CEO of one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies in the third quarter of 2021.

In a letter to employees, Jeff Bezos said Andy Jassy, the company’s top cloud executive, would take charge as the new CEO while Bezos will transition to executive chairman of Amazon’s board.

“I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos said in the letter to employees.

“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Bezos, 57, founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore before turning it into a mega-retailer with wide global reach. Amazon joined Apple and other $1 trillion market capitalisation companies under Bezos’ leadership in January 2021. Presently, Amazon is worth more than $1.6 trillion.

Jassy has led Amazon’s Web Services cloud team since its inception after joining the company in 1997. AWS continues to drive much of Amazon’s profit.