Amazon founder Jeff Bezos stepping down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant. Turning over the reins to the company’s longtime cloud-computing boss Andy Jassy.
Bezos has been Amazon’s CEO since its founding in 1994.
Oversaw its growth from an online bookseller into a $1.7 trillion global retail and logistics behemoth, which has also made Bezos into one of the world’s richest people.
Amazon announced on Tuesday that Andy Jassy will replace Bezos as CEO during the third quarter of this year.
The announcement came as Amazon reported a blowout holiday quarter with profits more than doubling to $7.2billion and revenue jumping 44 percent to $125.6billion.
Bezos said Amazon’s latest results showed it was the right time to make the transition.
In a letter to employees announcing the move, Bezos said: “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.”
Bezos added: “He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”
Bezos said he will stay engaged in important Amazon projects but will also have more time to focus on the Bezos Earth Fund.
He will also dedicate more time to his Blue Origin spaceship company, The Washington Post, and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.
Speaking of the future of the company under new leadership, he said Amazon will continue to “astonish” with new ventures that are “in the pipeline.”
“Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to,” Bezos explained.
“We have things in the pipeline that will continue to astonish.
“We serve individuals and enterprises, and we’ve pioneered two complete industries and a whole new class of devices.
“We are leaders in areas as varied as machine learning and logistics, and if an Amazonian’s idea requires yet another new institutional skill, we’re flexible enough and patient enough to learn it.”
In January, Elon Musk overtook Bezos in the wealth stakes, topping the rich list with a fortune of $185billion.
The Tesla boss has narrowly edged ahead of the Amazon CEO – whose current net worth is $188billion, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
