Jeff Bezos to Step Down as Amazon CEO in Q3

Founder of e-commerce giant Amazon Jeff Bezos has announced in an email to employees that he will be stepping down later this year as CEO after almost 30 years of being in this role.

Bezos revealed that he will transition into Executive Chair as Andy Jassy, who heads Amazon’s cloud-computing business, will replace him as the new CEO in the third quarter of this year.

Bezos said, “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.”

In his email, he shared that as Executive Chair, he aims to focus his energies toward new products and early initiatives being developed at Amazon.

He added, “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. I’ve never had more energy, and this isn’t about retiring. I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organisations can have.”

When Amazon was launched in 1995, it was with a mission ‘to be Earth’s most customer-centric company’ and since then the online behemoth has grown from strength to strength and is a pioneer in the e-commerce space. Bezos said that there is a lot more in store for the company.

He said, “Amazon couldn’t be better positioned for the future. We are firing on all cylinders, just as the world needs us to. 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.”