Bezos is one of the world's richest people, having recently been edged out of the top spot by Tesla CEO Elon Musk. with a network of facilities touching almost every part of the country. Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 as an online bookstore, survived the dot-com bubble in the early 2000s, and built the company into one of the largest employers in the U.S. The move is a major turning point in one of the most successful entrepreneurial runs in American history. In Jassy, Bezos is tapping a longtime Amazon employee who joined in 1997 and built the company’s cloud services business, which started as a small addition to its e-commerce operations but has grown in recent years to account for roughly 60 percent of operating profit and has become one of the leaders of the cloud computing industry. 'He's going to be executive chairman, super important role, super active in the Amazon success story.' 'I will reiterate is not leaving,' Brian Olsavsky, chief financial officer of Amazon, told investors on Tuesday. Bezos remains one of Amazon's biggest shareholders. Several major tech executives have stepped down as CEO and remained intimately involved in their companies’ business, including Larry Ellison at Oracle and Bill Gates at Microsoft.

It remains to be seen how active Bezos will be in Amazon’s business in his new role. Amazon's share price was up about 1.5 percent following the announcement.īezos steps away from Amazon at a time when its market value hovers around $1.7 trillion, making it one of the most valuable companies in the world. Investors didn’t seem fazed by the news, either.

Amazon reported a year of record growth on Tuesday, including a 38 percent increase in net sales from 2019, netting the company $21 billion in income, nearly double from the year before. The announcement set off alarm bells on Wall Street and throughout the business community, though the transition does not necessarily portend any significant change to Amazon’s business. David Paul Morris / Bloomberg via Getty Images file

In a memo to employees, Bezos said the transition will give him 'the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.' Andy Jassy, chief executive officer of web services at Inc., speaks during the Amazon Web Services Summit in San Francisco, on April 19, 2017.