Jeff Bezos, who has been the CEO of Amazon since he founded the company nearly 30 years ago, will step down from his role later in the year. Bezos said in a letter to his “fellow Amazonians” that he intends to focus his energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Also Read - 5 interesting facts about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos you didn't know
Andy Jassy will be the CEO of Amazon
Bezos will be replaced by 53-year-old Andy Jassy, who has worked in the company since 1997 and has been instrumental in the development of the company’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Jassy will take over the reins in the third quarter of 2021. Also Read - Jeff Bezos to resign; Sundar Pichai congrats and welcomes Andy Jassy as new Amazon CEO
“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 said in the letter. Also Read - Amazon to face formal antitrust charges by European Union for use of third-party seller data
Andy Jassy: Early days at Amazon
Jassy joined Amazon after graduating from Harvard Business School and worked as a technical assistant to Bezos in the early 2000s, Reuters reported.
“I took my last final exam at HBS, the first Friday of may in 1997 and I started Amazon next Monday. No, I didn’t know what my job was going to be, or what my title was going to be. It was super important to the Amazon people that we come that Monday,” Jassy revealed in a Harvard Business School podcast of September last year.
Founded Amazon Web Service in 2006
He is the CEO of AWS, which he founded in 2006. AWS is among the biggest names in cloud computing, which competes with the likes of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud.
Under Jassy’s leadership, AWS recorded its strongest quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year performance last year since its inception. The full-year revenue of $45.37 billion was recorded as it ended 2020. This is a 29.5 percent increase from 2019.
AWS recorded the strongest growth in 2020
Jassy said at the company’s ninth annual AWS re:Invent summit in December last year that the rate of growth in AWS continues to accelerate. He added that it is really hard to build a business that sustains for a long period of time.
“Ten years ago based on the revenue you’ll also see that AWS is nowhere to be seen in this list. And then if you fast-forward just 10 years, in 2020 you can see that AWS is now the fifth-largest enterprise IT company in the world, ahead of companies like SAP and Oracle. And of course, that growth is significantly driven by the growth of cloud computing in the infrastructure-technology space,” he said.
Jassy married in 1997
Part-owner of the new Seattle National Hockey League, the Kraken, Jassy is an avid sports fan. Jassy married Elana Rochelle Caplan in 1997. He is the father of two children.
