Who Is Andy Jassy? AWS Head Replaces Jeff Bezos As New Amazon CEO

Amazon is set to welcome a new chief executive officer, Andy Jassy, following Jeff Bezos' announcement on Tuesday that he is stepping down as CEO in the third quarter.

Bezos, 57, will exit his post with the e-commerce colussus in order to transition to executive chairman of Amazon’s board. His replacement, Jassy, is the company’s top cloud executive.

“I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO,” Bezos wrote in a statement. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”

Jassy graduated from Harvard University in 1990 and Harvard Business School seven years later. His new role makes him the second CEO in Amazon’s 27-year history.

Jassy joined the company in '97, and has led Amazon’s Web Services cloud team for the past 15 years. He was named AWS' CEO in 2016. His work with AWS helped the e-commerce company grow into a technology giant. The AWS division continues to drive much of Amazon’s profit.

The 53-year-old Jassy is a member of Amazon's S-team, which is Amazon's elite group of executives. The 17 other S-team members include finance chief Brian Olsavsky and Charlie Bill, senior vice president of Amazon's Utility Computing Services.

In 2019, Jassy earned $348,809 in compensation from Amazon. In 2018, he earned $19.7 million, most of which was from stock awards. He currently owns 85,000 shares of Amazon valued at $287.3 million.

Jassy’s success has stemmed from his ability to attract consumers to Amazon’s cloud computing products. He has conducted business with the Central Intelligence Agency and the Democratic National Committee. In recent years, the AWS division has partnered with Pinterest, Slack and Lift.

As of mid-2020, Amazon controls 33% of the world's cloud infrastructure services market. In that sector, the company tops Microsoft, which controls 18%, and Google, which claims 9%.