Bezos will step down as CEO of Amazon

SEATTLE — Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will step down as chief executive of the ecommerce giant, turning over the reins to the company’s longtime cloud-computing boss Andy Jassy.

Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post, will transition to the role of executive chair in the third quarter, the company said as it announced fourth-quarter earnings.

“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,” Mr. Bezos said in an earnings announcement Tuesday.

The looming transition marks the most radical shake-up in Amazon’s corporate ranks in its nearly 30-year history.

The company’s meteoric growth delivered massive riches to shareholders and made Mr. Bezos — depending on the day — the richest man on the planet. For all the praise on Wall Street, however, Mr. Bezos and his brass-knuckled tactics also carried great cost. Regulators increasingly viewed Amazon as a threat to competition and the company’s own workers at times told grim tales about their mistreatment as they sought to carry out Mr. Bezos’ mission as the “everything store.”

Mr. Bezos, who turned 57 last month, set up the transition to Mr. Jassy last summer, when the company announced one of its likely successors, Jeff Wilke, would retire. That paved the way for Mr. Jassy to take the CEO job.

To Tom Alberg, a venture capitalist and longtime Amazon director who stepped down from the board two years ago, Mr. Jassy was the obvious choice.

“Andy has lived his whole life in that culture, and that culture is so strong,” Mr. Alberg said.

Under Mr. Bezos’ stewardship, Amazon evolved from an upstart online bookseller into one of the world’s most popular

internet marketplaces able to quickly deliver a vast catalog of products and services. It also developed a profit-driving cloud computing business that powers websites around the world.

As a child, Mr. Bezos was intrigued by computers and interested in building things, such as alarms he rigged in his parents’ home. He got a degree in electrical engineering and computer science at Princeton University, and then worked at several Wall Street companies.

He quit his job at D.E. Shaw to start an online retail business, though at first he wasn’t sure what to sell. Mr. Bezos determined that an online bookstore would resonate with consumers.

Amazon has gone far beyond selling paperbacks. It produces movies, makes sofas, owns a grocery chain and even has plans to send satellites to space to beam internet service to earth. The company is one of the most valuable in the world, worth nearly $1.7 trillion.

Mr. Bezos’ next endeavors may turn out to be as significant as the second act of his Seattle-area neighbor Bill Gates, Mr. Alberg said. The Microsoft co-founder has gone on to burnish his image as one of the world’s leading philanthropists in the time after he moved away from Microsoft in 2000, when he gave up the CEO post he had long held. Mr. Bezos’ focus on space travel and climate change could have the same lasting impact, Mr. Alberg said.

“I think he’ll be like Gates,” Mr. Alberg said. “Twenty years from now, he’ll be remembered for one or more of those things as well.”