Jeff Bezos stepping down as Amazon CEO

Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, will transition to executive chairman in the third quarter, with Andy Jassy to become the company’s chief executive officer.

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Bezos, 57, who founded Amazon in 1994, and the online retail giant surpassed a $1 trillion market cap last year, CNBC reported.

“I’m excited to announce that this third quarter I’ll transition to executive chair of the Amazon board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos said in a letter to employees. “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.”

Jassy joined Amazon in May 1997 and founded Amazon Web Services in 2003. He was promoted to CEO in 2016.

According to a news release that reported the company’s fourth-quarter earnings, Amazon’s net sales increased 44% to $125.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2020, compared with $87.4 billion during the fourth quarter of 2019. Amazon also had a net income of $7.2 billion.

It marked the first time Amazon reported more than $100 billion in quarterly revenue, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” Bezos said in the news release. “If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”

Bezos founded Amazon as an online bookstore and turned it into a giant that sells just about everything, becoming one of the world’s richest persons in the process, according to The Associated Press.

Jassy received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University in 1990, according to his LinkedIn profile. He received a master’s degree from the Harvard Business School in 1997.

Cox Media Group