Jeff Bezos to step down as Amazon CEO this year

AWS Chief Andy Jassy will succeed Bezos in top role

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced on Tuesday that he would step down from company's CEO role this year.

Bezos, 57, will be replaced by Andy Jassy, the present chief of Amazon's cloud-computing business AWS.

"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 said in his letter to Amazon employees.

"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."

Bezos described the role of Amazon CEO as a "deep responsibility". He said that he would now get more time to focus on new products and early initiatives being developed at Amazon.

Bezos also plans to work more closely on his side projects, including his space exploration firm Blue Origin, philanthropic initiatives like Amazon Day 1 Fund and the Bezos Earth Fund, and overseeing the Washington Post newspaper, which he owns.

However, Bezos is likely to continue to be extremely influential within the company as executive chair and founder.

Industry CEOs congratulated Bezos and Jassy on upcoming transition. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai offered "best wishes" to Bezos on his future projects, while Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella described Jassy's promotion as "well-deserved". Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce, tweeted that Amazon "could not be in better hands."

Amazon currently stands is one of the world's most valuable firms, with a gross valuation of about $1.6 trillion.

Last year, the company reported $386bn in sales, up 38 per cent from the previous year. Amazon's profits almost doubled in 2020, increasing to $21.3bn.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, Amazon has been one of the ecommerce firms to benefit as people steer clear of high streets shopping malls and instead purchase items online.

On Tuesday, Amazon also reported its earnings for the quarter ending December 2020, revealing that its quarterly revenue jumped 44 per cent to $125.6 billion - beating analyst estimates of $119.7 billion.

However, the move comes at the time when Amazon and other big tech firms are facing increasing scrutiny from regulators worldwide about anticompetitive practices and market dominance.

In October last year, the US House Judiciary Committee's Antitrust Subcommittee released the findings of its 16-month-long investigation into the challenges posed by the dominance of tech giants in the digital economy.

The Subcommittee concluded that big tech firms like Amazon, Google and Facebook are effectively monopolies that need to be broken up to restore competition and improve innovation in the industry.

The report also recommended a number of policy measures to radically change the way tech firms operate. It urged lawmakers to consider empowering the agencies responsible for controlling market concentration and to introduce new antitrust rules to block attempts by companies to buy start-ups.