Jeff Bezos, World’s Richest Man, to Step Down as Amazon CEO Today.
Jeff Bezos, the world's richest man, is set to step down as Amazon CEO on Monday, handing over the reins to Andy Jassy.
In 1994, Bezos founded Amazon as a book-selling website. It is now a $1.7 trillion giant focused on e-commerce, cloud computing, banking, and much more, after 27 years.
Bezos will not retire; instead, he will take over as executive chairman of Amazon's board of directors and oversee a number of other projects. He'll focus on Blue Origin, the Day 1 and Earth Fund, the Washington Post, and other projects.
Andy Jassy, Amazon's new CEO, previously led Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides cloud computing services. Previously, the platform was utilised to power Amazon's website as well as third-party vendors' companies. It began providing cloud services to other businesses in 2006. It now accounts for more than half of Amazon's operating income.
Hundreds of Amazon executives have handed in their resignations in the last 18 months. Jeff Wilke, the head of Amazon's global consumer business, left the company in a big way. He and Jassy were vying for the position of Amazon CEO until he announced his early retirement last year.
After more than a decade at Amazon, executives who launched and managed programmes such as Alexa, Echo, free delivery, and cloud operations have gone. The majority of them are now in charge of high-growth startups.
The majority of the leaving executives have been with the organisation since its inception. After graduating from Harvard Business School in 1997, Jassy went to work for Amazon.
Former Amazon Vice President David Glick described Bezos and Wilke's departure as a "epic tectonic change."
Bezos had moved his focus away from Amazon's day-to-day operations in recent years, focusing on other strategic projects such as Blue Origin. Bezos, though, isn't content with merely making them; he's also started riding them. On July 20, he will will fly aboard this rocket company's first manned spaceflight.
