Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Stepping Down As CEO

Jeff Bezos is stepping down as chief executive of Amazon. com Inc. to become executive chairman, marking the biggest change in leadership of the tech giant since he started it in a Washington state garage more than 26 years ago.

The Wall Street journal reports  he will be succeeded as CEO in the third quarter by Andy Jassy, Mr. Bezos’s closest lieutenant and the longtime head of the company’s booming cloud-computing business.

Bezos, 57 years old, is handing over the day-to-day reins, as Amazon’s core businesses of online retail and business-computing services are booming during the Covid-19 pandemic, which has shifted work and life to the internet more than ever. The company announced his changing role as it reported that revenue in the fourth quarter soared 44% to $125.56 billion—surpassing $100 billion for the first time in a three-month span—and profit more than doubled.

Andy Jassy

But Amazon also faces the biggest regulatory challenges in its history, with multiple federal investigations into its competitive practices and lawmakers drafting legislation that could force Amazon to restructure its business. Tension with regulators and lawmakers has directly embroiled Mr. Bezos, who was called to testify in front of Congress last summer for the first time.

Bezos’s leadership of Amazon has made him one of the most respected, and feared, leaders in business, as well as fantastically wealthy. He is currently neck-and-neck with his rival rocket entrepreneur, Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk, as the world’s wealthiest person. Forbes lists Mr. Bezos’s wealth at more than $196 billion.

In an email to employees made public Tuesday, Mr. Bezos said he plans to focus his energy now on new products and early initiatives as well as his outside interests. “Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it’s consuming,” Mr. Bezos wrote. “When you have a responsibility like that, it’s hard to put attention on anything else.”

Bezos left a career on Wall Street to start Amazon.com in 1994 as a scrappy online bookseller during a time when most Americans didn’t own computers. Amazon became an against-all-odds success story that would go on to completely disrupt the bookselling industry along with nearly every other industry in its path, from logistics to advertising. The company today is America’s largest online retailer, the leading provider of cloud-computing services, a significant player in Hollywood, a competitor in bricks-and-mortar groceries through its Whole Foods subsidiary, and a growing rival to United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. in logistics. Amazon employs nearly 1.3 million people.