After serving as Amazon's CEO since its inception, Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO. Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) will take over from Bezos on July 5, a sentimental date for Bezos.
July 5 in the words of the outgoing Amazon Chief is a special and sentimental date. "It's the date that Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago," he said.
Dave Lee, a correspondent with the Financial Times who covers Amazon, tweeted Bezos' remarks.
"Andy is well known inside the company, and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He's going to be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence," Bezos said.
"He has the highest of high standards, and I guarantee that Andy will never let the universe make us typical," he added.
Half of Amazon revenues comes from AWS, the cloud arm of Amazon. AWS logged $54 billion in annualised run rate - a 32 per cent year-over-year growth -- in March quarter this year.
Jassy led AWS since it was founded in 2003 and was named CEO of the Cloud arm in 2016.
Jassy will be replaced by Salesforce executive Adam Selipsky, who has been appointed as the new AWS Chief.
Bezos, who built an online bookstore into a $1.7 trillion technology empire reaching into space, announced in February he will be stepping down as CEO at the apex of his career to focus on new innovations.
The 57 year old Chief wrote to "fellow Amazonians" in a blog post dated February on his step. He remarked that the CEO job took a lot of time and pulled him away from exploring new ideas and initiatives. "Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming."
Bezos who will continue serving Amazon as an Executive Chairperson also wrote, "When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else.