TIL Desk/Business/New York/ Billionaire Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon as an online bookseller nearly three decades ago, will step down as the CEO of the $1.7 trillion global retail giant in the third quarter of 2021 with Andy Jassy being named his successor.
Amazon, which announced Wednesday that 2020 net sales increased 38 per cent to $386.1 billion, compared with $280.5 billion in 2019, said Bezos, 57, will transition to the role of executive chair in the third quarter of this year and Jassy, 53, CEO of the company’s cloud business, Amazon Web Services, will become chief executive officer at that time.
“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal,” Bezos said, adding that the company pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalised recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more.
