By Amazon founder, Jeff Bezos, is standing aside as chief executive of the company he built from a startup into one of the world’s most valuable firms.
He will be handing over the CEO role to Andy Jassy, who heads Amazon Web Services.
The company announced this development in a statement on Tuesday.
The news came as Amazon reported a blowout holiday quarter with profits more than doubling to $7.2 billion and revenue jumping 44 percent to $125.6 billion, following global explosion of online sales caused by the pandemic lockdowns.
Bezos, the world’s richest person based on his Amazon stake, said he will transition to the role of executive chair in the third quarter.
The 57-year-old said he would “stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives” in a letter to his employees, adding he would pivot towards philanthropic initiatives, including his Day One Fund and Bezos Earth Fund, and other business ventures in space exploration and journalism.
His successor, Jassy joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997 and in 2003 founded AWS, the cloud services division of the company which has been one of the most profitable but least-known units of the tech giant.
