Jeff Bezos to be the Amazon Executive Chair later this year

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO and move to a new position with the company as executive chair of the Amazon board in the third quarter of 2021. Andy Jassy, currently serving as Amazon CEO Web Services (AWS) will replace Bezos as Amazon. CEO: Bezos has served as the CEO of Amazon since he founded the company in 1994, and has presided over the e-commerce giant as it grew from an online bookstore to one of the world's most dominant tech companies.

"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," commented Bezos in an email announcing the change. "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."

Under Bezos' leadership, Amazon has come to dominate internet commerce, has established itself as a backbone of the modern web infrastructure through its Amazon Web Services products, has built a subscription empire around its services Amazon Prime has launched popular tech products like the Echo, and the Kindle device lines, and even began venturing into physical retail through grocery stores and the Whole Foods acquisition.

Bezos has also thrived as a director of the company, with dizzying wealth that (until a few weeks ago) made him the richest human being on Earth, with a net worth of nearly $ 180 billion.

Bezos' transition to executive chairman of the Amazon board will mean that he will be a little further removed from the day-to-day business of running the nearly $ 1.7 trillion company, allowing him to focus his "energy and attention on new products and initiatives early. "Those projects will include the $ 10 billion Bezos Earth Fund, which Bezos established last year, and Blue Origins, his aerospace firm, which recently resumed test flights in late 2020.

Jassy is a familiar face at the company, having joined in 1997. He has led the Amazon Web Services team since its founding in 2003 and was named CEO of AWS in 2016. The choice of Jassy, who has led the Amazon cloud business from the start - about a retail or hardware executive is a telling factor in Amazon's priorities as a company.

Amazon's cloud business is a big part of the company (and the internet in general, to the point where AWS outages can wipe out entire swaths of the internet for hours), and his new leadership choice reflects that. He parallels other top CIOs, such as Microsoft's Satya Nadella, who was also a critical part of the company's cloud and server business before taking over Microsoft in 2014.

However, it will still be some time before Jassy takes over, Bezos isn't ready to transition into his new role until the third quarter of 2021.