Jeff Bezos to Step Down From Amazon CEO Position in Third-Quarter 2021

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will step down from his CEO position to transition to a different one at the company — as the executive chair of the Amazon board in the third quarter of this year, according to an email from Jeff Bezos to employees shared on the company's website.

The current CEO of Amazon Web Service (AWS) Andy Jassy will replace Bezos as the new CEO of Amazon.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to step down from CEO role in 2021

"I'm excited to announce that this Q3 I'll transition to Executive Chair of the Amazon Board and Andy Jassy will become CEO," read the first sentence of Bezos' email to Amazon employees.

"Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility, and it's consuming," said Bezos in his email. "When you have a responsibility like that, it's hard to put attention on anything else."

Bezos has maintained the role of CEO at Amazon since he founded it in 1994 — and since then he's stood at the top of the rising e-commerce superpower throughout its life, from an online bookstore to a major influencer of not only technology, but also global events.

"As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have 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," added Bezos in his email announcing the upcoming shift in leadership at Amazon.

Jeff Bezos leaving leadership of $1.7-trillion company for 'new products and early initiatives'

Since its founding, Amazon has become an insurmountable power in internet commerce, and exists now as the main feature of the internet's infrastructure via AMS. The company also built a megalithic subscription empire surrounding Amazon Prime. Additionally, the company has launched mainstream technology products — like Amazon Kindle and Amazon Echo devices.

Amazon has even entered the grocery store industry, with its acquisition of Whole Foods.

Jeff Bezos' forthcoming transition from CEO to executive chairman of Amazon's board will distance him somewhat from the daily grind of running a nearly $1.7-trillion super-corporation — which he claims will free him to focus "energies and attention on new products and early initiatives," according to his email.

Amazon's choice of cloud business leader for new CEO is telling

Bezos' other projects include Blue Origins — the billionaire's competitor aerospace firm to Elon Musk's SpaceX that recently resumed test flights — and the $10 billion Bezos Earth Fund.

The incoming CEO to Amazon — Jassy — is a common name in the company who joined the firm in 1997. He later rose to power in the company's team at Amazon Web Services since its founding in 2003, where he became CEO in 2016.

Jassy has also sat at the top of Amazon's cloud service business from its infancy, and is stepping over a retail or hardware executive at Amazon — which serves to highlight Amazon's aims going forward in the 2020s.

We can't stress enough how big Amazon's cloud business is. AWS outages have knocked out massive regional internet services for hours — and the company's new and incoming CEO is a reflection of Jessy's relevance for the firm. But we still have several months before Bezos officially steps down for the corporate transition in Q3 2021 — so we shouldn't count the current CEO out of our news feeds yet.

This was a breaking story and was regularly updated as new information became available.