Jeff Bezos Is Stepping Down As CEO Of Amazon

Jeff Bezos is stepping down as the CEO of Amazon.

On Tuesday, Bezos announced that he would be moving on from his position as Amazon’s CEO. Bezos, 57, founded the company 27 years ago. NBC News reports that he will transition into the executive chair role in the third quarter of 2021, which starts July 1. He will be passing the CEO torch to Andy Jassy, the chief executive of Amazon Web Services.

Bezos told his employees in a memo that he will be stepping down because it 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.”

On Tuesday, Amazon’s latest records were released, which includes a 38 percent increase in net sales from 2019, pulling in a whopping $21 billion in income, NBC News reports. That’s double what the company made a year prior. Amazon’s share price also went up about 1.5 percent after the announcement. Amazon is currently worth $1.7 trillion.

What has now become a mega-conglomerate company started as an online bookstore. Amazon is now one of the most valuable companies in the world. “The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the internet?,'” Bezos said in the employee memo about the early days of Amazon. “Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.”

Bezos may not be the CEO soon, but he definitely still plans on taking care of business. NBC reports that Bezos intends on spending more time on his space exploration company Blue Origin and The Washington Post, which he owns. He also wants to focus on his philanthropic efforts, including the Day 1 Fund and the Bezos Earth Fund, which are geared towards assisting homeless families and starting preschools in low-income communities and climate change. “I’m super passionate about the impact I think these organizations can have,” he wrote in his note to employees.