Amazon will gain a new CEO this summer. As part of its fourth-quarter earnings disclosure, the company announced that Jeff Bezos will transition to the position of executive board chairman while Andy Jassy moves up from Amazon Web Services where he was CEO.
In an email posted to the About Amazon site, Bezos told employees that he will step back from day-to-day operations to focus more on "new products and early initiatives" as well as corporate philanthropy and his other properties like The Washington Post.
Bezos co-founded Amazon.com as a bookselling website in 1994, went public in 1997, and was able to survive through the dot-com bubble, achieving full-year profitability in 2003. By that point, it had expanded its product catalogue to include other media as well as computer hardware and software.
Much of that was led by Jassy, who joined Amazon just after its IPO and quickly became Bezos's right-hand man for technology. Jassy also charged the company into offering cloud storage in 2006, leading it in what was essentially a competitor-free space for years as legacy giants were slow to adapt.
Speaking of the Post, it was only in September when the publication reported that Jassy was the likeliest contender to succeed Bezos when the time came — Jeff Wilke, the company's consumer business chief and the other candidate for succession, had announced retirement plans last year.
Via: The Washington Post