Who is Andy Jassy, who will succeed Jeff Bezos at Amazon?

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos on Tuesday announced his decision to step down as the chief executive of the world's largest online retailer, handing over the reins to Andy Jassy, currently the head of Amazon's lucrative cloud sector Amazon Web Services (AWS). 

Jassy will become CEO as Bezos, 57, will transition to the role of Executive Chair in the third quarter of this year. "Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, it's consuming and with that responsibility, it is hard to give attention on anything else," said Bezos in his letter to Amazonians. 

Jassy, who cuts a low profile outside of the world of cloud computing, has some big shoes to fill in. Jassy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as Bezos has. "Jassy will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence," the Amazon founder noted in his letter. 

Jassy joined Amazon as a marketing manager in 1997, soon after completing Harvard Business School. “I took my last final exam at HBS, the first Friday of May in 1997, and I started Amazon next Monday,” Jassy said in a Harvard Business School podcast in September, The Guardian reports. “No, I didn’t know what my job was going to be, or what my title was going to be,” he added. 

In 2003, Jassy went on to found Amazon Web Services, or AWS, the cloud services division of the company which has been one of the most profitable but least-known units of the tech giant. AWS is a cloud hosting product that creates the infrastructure used by millions of companies, schools, and governments to run websites and apps. Amazon said it was not announcing an AWS replacement for Jassy yet.

He is said to have stocks over $30 million at Amazon. His base compensation was $175,000 while he was the CEO of AWS in 2020.

AWS has now grown into a cloud platform used by millions that dominates legacy players like Oracle and Microsoft.

Reportedly, the company now owns almost half the world’s public cloud infrastructure market and boasts a dominant 30 per cent market share of the cloud computing market.

Jassy has occasionally spoken out on social issues, tweeting about the need for police accountability after Breonna Taylor, a Black woman, was killed in her home by white policemen during a botched raid, and in favor of LGBTQ+ rights.

He has shown a passion for social and philanthropic issues. He has long devoted time to a Seattle non-profit that helps low-income students get into top schools. As homelessness became an all-consuming issue in Amazon's hometown, Jassy quietly joined the company's local city council member in walking the city during the one-night count designed to tally the scale of the crisis, Bloomberg reports.

Whether by nature or that experience as Bezos's "shadow," Jassy is uncannily similar to his boss, the report said citing current and former colleagues. He has instituted Amazon's preference for rigorous data-driven decision-making throughout AWS and has been known to intervene in meetings when executives go on tangents unrelated to pleasing the customer. Colleagues say he's precise and can recall small details from long-ago meetings.

Jassy is also known as an occasional micromanager on projects close to his heart, another trait he has in common with Bezos. His challenge as CEO will be to understand the consumer and logistics parts of the business as well as he knows AWS. Jassy is married to Elana Rochelle Caplan with two kids and lives in Seattle. 

Raised in the New York City area, he remains an avid New York sports fan, and holds a minority stake in the Seattle Kraken expansion National Hockey League team.