Andy Jassy to ascend Amazon's throne

Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO and Andy Jassy to step up as new CEO.

In a surprising announcement on 2nd February 2021, Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos announced that he will be stepping down as CEO. Nearly 3 decades have passed since Jeff Bezos first started the E-commerce giant in his garage on 5 of July 1994, Bellevue, Washington, United States. Surely a lot of time has passed and It has been a rollercoaster of emotions for Jeff Bezos through the years as the company grew from a small garage to the now gigantic behemoth of a platform that it is today.

So who will succeed Jeff Bezos as CEO?

It seems that Jeff Bezos is leaving his beloved company into good hands. Meet Andy Jassy, who has been journeying with Amazon since 1997 will be taking over as the new ceo. He first joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997 and have since contributed and helped Amazon grow into what it is today. However, Andy Jassy ascension to the throne won't be until the third quarter of 2021.

Andy currently leads Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing offshoot which provides a range of online services making it one of the most profitable divisions of the e-commerce giant. These web services are used widely in businesses. Andy Jassy is a graduate of Harvard Business School, he founded AWS in 2003 and became the CEO in 2016. Under his leadership, the division has grown to a cloud platform used by millions, signing major customers including Honeywell,Verizon, and McDonald's. The service is competing and going toe to toe with Microsoft Corp’s Azure and Alphabet Inc’s Google Cloud and has brought in USD 12.7 billion, a profit of 28 percent increase from a year ago.

He grew up in Scarsdale and attended the Scarsdale High School. Everett L. Jassy the father of Andy Jassy was a senior partner at Dewey Ballantine, which is a major corporate law firm in New York City. Jassy graduated from ivy league school Harvard College and then again earned his MBA at the college business school. He has been married since 1997 to Elana Rochelle Caplan. They have two children and they currently live in Seattle. Andy is also a music and sports fan, he is a minority owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.

What is Andy Jassy's NetWorth?

According to Amazon’s most recent proxy statements he was paid a total of  USD 348,809 in 2019 . But that's not all, he also owns about 85,000 shares in the company, valued at USD 287.3 million as of  2nd February 2021.
As of November 2020 Andy's net worth was estimated at USD 394 million. In Amazon’s early years Andy took on the role of “Jeff Bezos’s Shadow.”

This position has kept him at Jefff Bezos side daily as the two surveyed the company and moved toward developing AWS, according to a 2015 Forbes profile of Andy Jassy. In his statement on Tuesday, Jeff Bezos stated that Andy was well known inside the company and that he had been at Amazon for almost as long as he has and that he will be an outstanding leader for the giant e-commerce and he had his full confidence in Andy.

What will become of Jeff Bezos?

Even though Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO of his beloved company he will still be actively involved in the company matters. Yes Jeff Bezos will be stepping down as the CEO but that's not the end of his journey with the company he started from scratch nearly 3 decades ago. Jeff Bezos will now act as the executive chairman of Amazon. He posted a note to employees on Amazon's website. According to the note as Executive Chairman he will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also at the same time, give the time and energy he needs to focus on the Blue Origin, the Bezos Earth Fund, Day 1 Fund, The Washington Post, and his other passions. 

Hopefully Bezos will be able to focus more on his other projects. Now that he will be stepping down as the CEO of Amazon we may just see the rise of Blue Origin. Space travelling may just be right at our door steps.