Around 7 hours ago, Jeff Bezos, 57, announced that he will step down as CEO from Amazon later this year (after Q3)- a company he founded 27 years ago.
He will stay on as Executive Chairman of the board.
Andy Jassy, the lead of Amazon Web Services (one of Amazon's largest sources of revenue) will take over the role of CEO.
Why?
Bezos wants to spend more time focusing on Bezos Earth Fund (his initiative to help combat climate change, to which he committed $10 billion in February 2020), his Blue Origin spaceship company (a company for private space travel- a direct competitor to Musk's SpaceX), The Washington Post and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.
Market Response
Amazon's stocks went up post the announcement, but that is likely due to the fact that the Q4 results of Amazon were release, where they reported a revenue of $100bn - piggybacking on the surge in online shopping during the pandemic.
Only Apple has posted numbers of this magnitude before. To put it in perspective, Reliance, India’s biggest firm in terms of market cap, has a revenue of less than $100bn in a year!
It has been an incredible journey for the Amazon founder. When Jeff Bezos was named TIME "Man Of The Year" in 1999, Amazon did $1.64 billion in sales.
In the quarter where Bezos announces he is transitioning away, Amazon does $1.4 billion every 30 hours.
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