Jeff Bezos will be replaced by Andy Jassy in the third quarter of 2021 and move to the position of executive chairman.
Bezos announced this transition in an email sent to Amazon employees on Thursday. In the email, he said that, “in the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives.”
“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.”
Jassy, the incoming CEO, is currently head of Amazon Web Services, their cloud business. He has worked for Amazon since 1997 and led AWS since it was developed. As of October 2020, AWS was responsible for 52% of Amazon’s operating income.
Bezos has said that he will be focusing on initiatives such as Day 1, The Washington Post, the Bezos Earth Fund and Blue Origin, his privately funded space initiative.
The announcement came on the same day that the US Federal Trade Commission ordered Amazon to pay back delivery drivers US$61.7 million. According to the FTC, Amazon kept tips from delivery drivers in their Flex program. This went on for two-and-a-half years, stopping when Amazon discovered the FTC investigation.
Amazon’s 2020 revenue is expected to be more than US$380 billion.