Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is Stepping Down for This Reason

Jeff Bezos, one of the world’s wealthiest men and the chief executive of e-commerce giant Amazon is stepping down from his role in the third quarter of 2021.

Bezos will be executive chair of the company moving forward and in his place as CEO will be Andy Jassy, who runs Amazon Web Services (AWS) and has been with the company for almost 24 years.

Bezos wrote in his letter to employees, “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. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” he said.

“Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else,” 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.”

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky, said on a media call that the executive change was decided in consultation with Amazon’s board of directors. According to Olsavksy, Bezos will remain very involved and have his fingerprints on lots of different parts of the company.

Bezos also wrote in his letter, “This journey began some 27 years ago. Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, “What’s the internet?” Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while. Today, we employ 1.3 million talented, dedicated people, serve hundreds of millions of customers and businesses, and are widely recognized as one of the most successful companies in the world.”

“How did that happen? Invention. Invention is the root of our success. We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you get it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. And that yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive.”

Bezos’ announcement was made when Amazon reported its fiscal fourth quarter earnings results that beat expectations.

The company reported earnings of $14.09 a share on record revenue of $125.56 billion. This was compared to consensus estimates of $7.34 a share on revenue of $119.70 per Bloomberg data.

This is the first time that sales topped $1 billion.

Amazon had said in early December that the 2020 holiday shopping season had been its biggest yet.

Shares of Amazon have increased 66% over the past year.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.