Andy Jassy
Who is the new Amazon boss and successor to Jeff Bezos?
Will direct the fortunes of Amazon in a few months: Andy Jazzy.
© imago images / ZUMA Wire
Starting in the summer, Andy Jassy will take over from Jeff Bezos as Amazon boss. Who is the man who is entrusted with the trillion company?
The story of Jeff Bezos (57) and that of his company Amazon is the epitome of the American dream. Founded in 1994 as an inconspicuous online mail order company for books, it blossomed into a treasure trove for pretty much every product – and during the Corona crisis it became a company with a market value of around 1.7 trillion US dollars. All the more surprising was the announcement that Bezos would step down as CEO from summer 2021 and make room for a man named Andy Jassy. Who is the man Bezos entrusts with the world's most valuable company?
An Amazon veteran
Jassy, who is around five years younger than himself, can feel like a veteran of the company. He joined Amazon in 1997 immediately after completing his studies, as he revealed in a Harvard Business School podcast last year: "I wrote my last, final exam at HBS (Harvard Business School, editor's note) on the first Friday in May 1997. The following Monday I started at Amazon. "
It is understandable that Bezos has full confidence in his designated successor, as he affirmed in his announcement of the change in power: "Andy is well known in the company and has been with Amazon for almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader and he enjoys mine full confidence. "
Jassy is a doer himself
The fact that Bezos sees his empire in good hands in the future is likely to have something to do with the success that Jassy has achieved as head of the cloud subsidiary Amazon Web Services (AWS). The internal start-up, which offers IT infrastructures and storage space for developers, was founded by Jassy and launched in 2006. With success, meanwhile AWS itself makes billions in sales. In 2020, according to an extensive revenue report from Amazon, sales were 45 billion US dollars with a profit of 13.5 billion US dollars.
This corresponds to only ten percent of Amazon sales – but a whopping 60 percent of profit. Jeff Bezos won't turn his back on his company completely. From the third quarter of 2021 onwards, he will be the Executive Chairman. He also remains the largest shareholder. For the title of richest person in the world, he is in a close race with Tesla and SpaceX boss Elon Musk (49).