Andy Jassy, Amazon’s New Bezos
Amazon Web Services, which Jassy ran for almost two decades, is on track for $61.3 billion in sales this year, up 35% from 2020, and the reward for his success was being named CEO of the whole company.
Andy Jassy
Photographer: F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg
In February, Jeff Bezos shocked the world by announcing his resignation as CEO and his new role as executive chair. His choice of successor was less surprising. Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 from Harvard Business School, back when the company sold only books. A lifelong music lover, he pitched expanding into CDs, then watched as Bezos let a more seasoned executive run the new initiative. Jassy then joined the email marketing department, right before Bezos gutted it to cut costs during the dot-com bust.
But Bezos saw potential in Jassy. He asked him to become his chief of staff, then after two years tapped him to run Amazon Web Services, a seemingly far-afield effort to sell raw computing power to startups and universities. Jassy turned that business into a juggernaut—last year it did $45.4 billion in sales. It’s one of the fastest-growing and most profitable parts of Amazon’s empire.