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Amazon's Andy Jassy has taken over the reigns of the e-commerce giant as chief executive officer and founder Jeff Bezos transitions to the role of executive chair.
"Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have," Bezos wrote in an email to employees earlier this year. "He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence."
| Ticker | Security | Last | Change | Change % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMZN | AMAZON.COM INC. | 199.16 | -3.72 | -1.83% |
AMAZON'S ANDY JASSY IS IN LINE FOR BIG DAY PAY
FOX Business takes a look at what to know about Jassy:
CLIMBED LADDER AT AMAZON
Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 as a marketing manager before founding Amazon Web Services, the company's highly profitable cloud computing unit in 2003. He was later promoted from senior vice president to CEO of AWS in 2016.
Amazon Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said on the company’s earnings call back in February that the executive change was made in consultation with Amazon’s board of directors, calling Jassy a visionary leader.
JASSY'S FOCUS AT AMAZON AND WALL ST. HOPES
At the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in San Francisco last year, Jassy said there are "really only two significant industries which Amazon has disrupted," speaking about retail and technology infrastructure. "In both cases, they were models that were pretty antiquated," he added.
The veteran cloud computing leader also talked about how the cloud is shaping the future, noting the "number one reason that enterprises and public sector organizations are moving to the cloud is agility and speed and the ability to innovate at a much more rapid clip."
He is also inheriting a stock price that soared under Bezos since its May 5 IPO, rising 229,422.7% and is closing in on $4,000 per share with a current market cap of just under $2 trillion.
HARVARD GRADUATE AND POLITICS
The 53-year-old executive attended Harvard University for his undergraduate studies and received an MBA from the Ivy League institution.
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A native of Scarsdale, N.Y., a study of Jassy's Twitter feed shows him mostly touting and supporting Amazon-related projects. Since August of 2020, he has posted 15 times that he is "excited" about one project or another.
While mostly steering clear of politics, Jassy has previously shown support for Supreme Court decisions that made it illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the workplace and blocked former President Trump's bid to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
HOCKEY HEAD
A longtime hockey fan who grew up cheering the New York Rangers, Jassy is also part owner of the new National Hockey League expansion team, the Seattle Kraken. According to Fortune magazine, he is such a passionate sports fan he built a sports bar inside his home.
Of the colorful name of the team, he explained to ESPN why it is the perfect moniker for Seattle's first NHL team.
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"It's a very unique and unusual name in sports, because almost all sport franchises end with an 'S,'" Jassy told the 24-hour sports network, "There are a lot of obvious connections to Seattle -- part because of our maritime history; part of because we have so much water around us -- but there is longtime folklore in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest of this mystical Kraken creature that lives just below the surface of the sea, which really captivated people for many years."
Amazon bought the naming rights to the arena where Jassy's team will play. But instead of calling it Amazon Arena it is called Climate Pledge Arena.
RESPECTED AMONG TECH TITAN COLLEAGUES
Microsoft CEOs Satya Nadella and his Google counterpart Sundar Pichai congratulated Jassy and Bezos on the new roles.
This story, originally published in February 2021, has been updated.
