Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO of Amazon, 27 years after founding it with his ex-wife and building it into one of the most successful companies of all time that is now worth $1.7trillion.
Bezos, 57, will be replaced by 53-year-old Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon Web Services, and he will move to the role of Executive Chair where he says he wants to focus on ‘new products and initiatives’.
The move will not happen until the third quarter of this year. Bezos announced the change in an email to staff on Tuesday afternoon and as the company reported bumper 2020 Q4 earnings of more than $100billion.
He said: ‘Fellow Amazonians,
‘I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO.
‘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.
‘This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name.
‘The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.
‘Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world,’ he said.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (pictured with his girlfriend Lauren Sanchez) announced on Tuesday he was stepping down as CEO of the company later this year
Bezos will be replaced by Amazon Web Services CEO, Andy Jassy
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 on a road trip with his ex-wife MacKenzie.
It made him the richest man in the world with a net worth of $188billion.
He and Elon Musk trade the title depending on their respective companies’ success in the markets.
Amazon’s share price went up by 1.1 percent after the announcement but were not dramatically changed.
Jassy, a married father-of-two and Harvard graduate, was recently hailed by Amazon employees as a decisive ‘shark’.
It was his decision to end Amazon’s business with Parler, an unregulated social media site favored by the alt-right that was used, in part, to orchestrate the January 6 Capitol riot.
‘He has a tremendous amount of trust in his team, but you have to be at the highest levels of diligence and preparation for any meeting with him.
‘He’s a shark who will smell a drop of blood from 100 miles away if you’re not ready,’ one employee told Business Insider on January 31 in a profile about how he could become the next CEO.
Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore in 1994, before the internet was widely used.
He told his wife about the his idea while they were driving from New York City to Seattle. They’d been married for a year and had quit their jobs at law firms.
Amazon shares were largely unaffected at the time of the announcement on Tuesday afternoon
Amazon’s share price has grown hugely not only since Bezos and MacKenzie divorced but since the start of the pandemic. The company is worth more than $1.7trillion now
Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online market place for books. He is shown in 1997
A 1999 60 Minutes interview shows Bezos in an office with a spray-painted amazon.com sign
Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos at Allen & Co in 2003
MacKenzie later recalled in an interview: ‘I’m not a businessperson. So to me, what I’m hearing when he tells me that idea is the passion and the excitement.
‘And to me, you know, watching your spouse, somebody that you love, have an adventure — what is better than that, and being part of that?’
She started working as an accountant and was one of the first Amazon employees.
They started by forming contracts with book stores like Barnes & Noble to sell their books online, then added from there.
Now, it is the single largest online retail marketplace in the world and Amazon Web Services accounts for a huge amount of the world’s advertising.
In January 2019, Bezos and MacKenzie announced they were divorcing after it was revealed he had been having a relationship with TV personality Lauren Sanchez.
The divorce split the company stocks, and made MacKenzie the richest woman in the world with a settlement of around $38billion.
That nearly doubled throughout the COVID-19 pandemic as Amazon – one of the only retailers that could continue because of its online retail model – thrived.
MacKenzie has put her ex-husband to shame in recent months with her charitable giving.
Bezos didn’t explain the timing for the announcement on Tuesday.
He signed off his email telling staff to ‘keep inventing’ and not be put off if the idea ‘looks crazy’.
Over the last four years, Bezos has, along with the rest of Silicon Valley, faced tougher criticism from governments around the world about monopolizing technology and the way the world depends on it.
He has testified at Congress about Amazon’s practices, along with other CEOs, and insisted that Amazon is not anti-competitive despite its market dominance.
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