AWS’ Andy Jassy To Take Amazon.com CEO Reins July 5

‘Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have,’ Amazon.com founder and current CEO Jeff Bezos said. ‘He is going to be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.’

Andy Jassy officially will start as Amazon.com’s new CEO on July 5, replacing founder Jeff Bezos, who told company shareholders today that he’ll step down from the role on that day.

“We chose that date because it’s sentimental for me: the day Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago,” Bezos said today during the Seattle-based Amazon’s virtual annual shareholder meeting.

Bezos will transition to executive chairman of the Amazon board under plans first unveiled in February. Amazon had announced then that Jassy — CEO of Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing business, since its launch in 2006 — would replace Bezos on an unspecified date in the third quarter. Jassy has been with Amazon since 1997, joining right out of Harvard Business School.

“Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have,” Bezos said. “He is going to be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Amazon announced in March that Adam Selipsky, an AWS alum and then CEO of Tableau Software, also a Seattle company, would be the new AWS CEO. Selipsky started at AWS on May 17 and is shadowing Jassy until the changes in command.

Selipsky first started at AWS in 2005 and had served as vice president of marketing, sales and support -- a chief operating officer role -- until his 2016 move to Tableau.

Bezos, in his annual letter to shareholders on April 15, said he would focus on new initiatives as executive chairman.

“I’m an inventor,” he said. “It’s what I enjoy the most and what I do best. It’s where I create the most value.”