Amazon.com Inc founder and the world’s second richest person Jeff Bezos has announced that he will step down as CEO and become executive chairman of the tech giant and hand over charge to Andy Jassy, the head of the company’s cloud computing division in the third quarter of this year.
The change also reflects Amazon’s growth from its beginning as an online bookseller 27 years ago to a huge web retailer and then to an internet conglomerate with a quarterly turnover that has touched a phenomenal $100 billion.
The 53-year-old Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 after Harvard Business School, founding Amazon Web Sources (AWS) and growing it to a cloud platform used by millions of customers, the company’s website said.
Jassy has been quite outspoken in taking on rivals such as tech giant Oracle Corp and cloud rival Microsoft Corp, which AWS continues to surpass in sales. Bezos has been more reticent in his public comments about competitors.
Under Jassy’s leadership, Amazon’s cloud business has gained major customers such as Verizon, McDonald’s and Honeywell. Amazon had also taken on then President Donald Trump over a controversial $10 billion contract for a defence project from the Pentagon which was awarded to Microsoft.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Wednesday congratulated Jeff Bezos and his successor Andy Jassy on their new roles after the Amazon founder announced his decision to stand aside later this year as chief executive of the company.
