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Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Elon Musk’s perpetual rival in the see-saw “world’s richest man” contest, today announced he is leaving the CEO post of the Internet giant he has led since 1994.
Bezos will switch from the CEO spot to Amazon’s executive chairmanship in Q3 of this year, he told his “fellow Amazonians” in a staff email posted on Amazon’s website. Bezos’ replacement as CEO will be Andy Jassy, a key player in Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud-computing division.
“This journey began some 27 years ago,” Bezos wrote. “Amazon was only an idea, and it had no name. The question I was asked most frequently at that time was, ‘What’s the Internet?’ Blessedly, I haven’t had to explain that in a long while.”
Bezos plans to stay involved in product development. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives,” he wrote. “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.”
This news is breaking and we’ll be adding detail to the story shortly.
