Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has announced the date that he will step down from his current role with the company.
Bezos, who helms the country’s second-largest company by revenue, announced on Wednesday during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting that he will step down on July 5 and be replaced by Andy Jassy, who currently heads Amazon Web Services.
“We chose that date because it’s sentimental for me, the day Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago,” Bezos said during the virtual gathering.
After his departure, Bezos will transition into the role of executive chairman of the Amazon board. The company announced that Bezos was leaving the chief executive position in February in its fourth-quarter financial results. It also announced at the time that Jassy, who has been with Amazon since 1997, would be replacing Bezos.
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“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives. 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,” Bezos told employees in a letter earlier this year.
Bezos has said that stepping down from the CEO role will allow him more time to focus on some of his other projects, such as the homelessness nonprofit organization Day 1 Fund, the Blue Origin spaceship company, the Bezos Earth Fund, and the Washington Post, which he purchased in 2013.
Bezos is currently the richest person on the planet, with an estimated net worth of some $188 billion as of Tuesday.
Bezos’s personal life has also generated headlines. After 25 years of marriage, he announced his divorce with MacKenzie Scott in January 2019. The two have four children, and Bezos said at the time that despite the divorce, he and Scott would continue to pursue “ventures and adventures” together.
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More recently, Amazon has been the target of unions after a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, unsuccessfully attempted to organize. Union leaders claimed that despite the companywide $15 minimum wage, employees are subjected to poor working conditions and company surveillance.
