Bezos, who founded the company in 1994, will hand over the CEO role to Andy Jassy – currently CEO of Amazon Web Services
In a letter to his 1.3 million employees, founder Bezos explained that he intends: “to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.”
“Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else. 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.”
But who is Andy Jassy?
CEO Jeff Bezos will be handing one of the most infamous positions in the business world to Andy Jassy.
Andy Jassy is currently CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS), with clients as huge as streaming giant Netflix at $19 million and popular streaming platform Twitch, at $15 million. Jassy has been working with Jeff Bezos for 23 years at Amazon, long-known within closed doors as a future heir to the throne. He founded AWS, then growing the cloud service over a couple of decades into an entity as expansive as Amazon itself.
The digital portfolio is so vast that there were antitrust investigations launched against AWS by the European Commission in 2020.
Bezos threw clear support behind Jassy in the very first paragraphs of his email, saying that: “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.”
The pandemic was a goldmine for the company
The global pandemic created newfound dependence on online buying for hundreds of thousands who found themselves at risk of infection – especially via Amazon Prime, which runs a next-day delivery service that is famous globally. Bezos gained around $97 billion through the pandemic in 2020, leaving him with a total of $200 billion in personal wealth.
Amazon hired atleast 175,000 workers to meet the increased demand, making their workforce number one million by July 2020. The holiday bonus being given to all employees is worth $500 million, which is 0.5% of the $97 billion profit Bezos made, and 9.6% of the $5.2 billion profit Amazon saw in the last financial quarter.
