According to an announcement released on Tuesday, founder and current CEO of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Jeff Bezos will step down from the head of the mammoth retail giant. Bezos will be replaced by current Amazon Web Services CEO and longtime Amazon executive Andy Jassy.
The announcement is fairly big news for the mammoth retailer, which has closely guarded its plans for replacing Bezos for some time. Bezos, who founded Amazon in 1994 in his garage and has been in charge ever since, will step down and hand over the reins to Jassy in Q3 2021. Bezos plans to step over to the executive chairman's position and focus his "energies and attention on new products and early initiatives."
Bezos has spoken highly of his replacement, who has been with Amazon since 1997 and has been in charge of Amazon Web Services since it was first formed. Under Jassy, AWS grew to become one of Amazon's most profitable divisions and has helped establish the company as a household name and a mainstay in various corporate offices around the world. Jassy's longtime tenure at Amazon and the success of AWS made him a natural choice to replace Bezos. Many other CEOs have taken to social media to back Amazon's decision to pick Jassy and have showered both him and Bezos with congratulatory tweets.
"Congratulations to @JeffBezos and @ajassy on your new roles. A well-deserved recognition of what you have accomplished." Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), tweeted.
Jassy isn't entering Amazon's head office at the best time, however. While the company is making record amounts of profit due to the pandemic and the natural explosive growth of its business, Amazon is also facing heavy scrutiny from regulators. Tech giants have become a bipartisan target on Capitol Hill due to their rapidly growing market power. With recent progressive nominations to President Joe Biden's cabinet such as Gary Gensler and Rohit Chopra for the SEC and CFPB, respectively, the federal government appears to be signaling more stringent antitrust regulations and more oversight of the tech sector.