Jeff Bezos To Step Down As CEO Of Amazon

SEATTLE — Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will step down as the company's CEO later this year after nearly three decades at the helm of the Seattle tech giant.

Bezos made the announcement Tuesday during Amazon's financial update for the final quarter of 2020. He will assume the role of executive chair and will be replaced as CEO by Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon Web Services.

Bezos released a statement on his decision Tuesday afternoon:

“Amazon is what it is because of invention. We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more. If you do it right, a few years after a surprising invention, the new thing has become normal. People yawn. That yawn is the greatest compliment an inventor can receive. When you look at our financial results, what you’re actually seeing are the long-run cumulative results of invention. Right now I see Amazon at its most inventive ever, making it an optimal time for this transition.”

Bezos founded the company that would become Amazon in a Bellevue garage in 1994 and took the company public in 1997. Since then, Amazon has grown into the largest online retailer in the world, upending business models for large and small companies alike and becoming a frequent target of lawmakers both locally and in Congress.

In a testament to the company's power, local governments offered all sorts of incentives and tax breaks when Amazon announced it was building an "HQ2" in 2017. The incentives being offered ended up drawing more scrutiny than praise with the company withdrawing plans to build in New York City after backlash. Ultimately, Amazon settled on a $5 billion plan to develop a campus in Arlington County, Virginia.

The company's ambitious expansion plans have, so far, not slowed its growth in the Seattle region. In January, Amazon surpassed Boeing as Washington's biggest employer, with close to 50,000 workers in Seattle, and plans to expand its Bellevue workforce to 25,000 people.

What started as a simple online bookseller now dominates all categories of e-commerce and continues to push its way into every sector of the economy. Amazon delivery vehicles and signs can be seen on the streets in virtually every American city. Bezos' net worth is rapidly approaching $200 billion with no sign of slowing down.

With the tech giant's outsized influence, it has also drawn scrutiny from regulators and lawmakers who want to protect smaller businesses from being eaten up by the behemoth. Last summer, Bezos along with top executives from Google, Apple and Facebook testified before the House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee. The hearing was part of the committee's investigation of competition in the digital marketplace.

In Washington, Amazon had faced local efforts to tax its earnings, successfully fighting a head tax in 2018, which the Seattle City Council approved and swiftly reversed amid intense pressure. Two years later, the council approved the "JumpStart" tax on Amazon and other large employers, estimated to raise more than $200 million annually.

In the current legislative session, Washington lawmakers are considering a proposal to implement a 1 percent "excessive wealth tax," which would apply only to Washington's billionaires, including Bezos, Bill Gates and Howard Schultz. Bezos owns a massive waterfront estate along the Lake Washington waterfront in Medina and maintains other residences in New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

In an e-mail to employees Tuesday, Bezos said his new role would allow him to stay engaged with Amazon's operations, while having more time to focus on his other projects, including Kent-based Blue Origin, the Bezos Earth Fund and the Washington Post.

"As much as I still tap dance into the office, I'm excited about this transition," Bezos wrote. "Millions of customers depend on us for our services, and more than a million employees depend on us for their livelihoods. Being the CEO of Amazon is a deep responsibility and it's consuming. When you have a responsibility like that, it's hard to put attention on anything else."

During Tuesday's briefing, Amazon reported a 72 percent increase in operating cash flow over the last year and a $125.6 billion surge in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020.

Feroze Dhanoa contributed to this report.