After Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos announced to step down as chief executive of the e-commerce giant, several CEO, including Sundar Pichai, congratulated him for his new ventures.
Bezos will now become the executive chairman of Amazon, a move he said would give him "time and energy" to focus on his other ventures. Bezos will be replaced by Andy Jassy, who is currently the head of Amazon's cloud division Amazon Web Services known as AWS.
Bezos said in a note to employees posted on Amazon's website, "As Exec Chair I will stay engaged in important Amazon initiatives but also have the time and energy I need to focus on the Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions". Blue Origin is Bezos' space company.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Alphabet Inc, sent his wishes to Bezos for his two passions projects -- the Day 1 Fund and Bezos Earth Fund. Pichai also congratulated Jassy for his new role as Amazon's CEO.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also congratulated both Bezos and Jassy by writing, "A well-deserved recognition of what you have accomplished".
Marcelo Claure, executive chairman at WeWork and COO of Softbank, welcomed Bezos to the "executive chairman club" and added, " This is when the real fun begins".
Padmasree Warrior, founder and CEO of Fable and a Spotify and Microsoft board member, called Jassy's promotion a "well deserved step-up."
Bezos is ending his role as the CEO on a high note: the business he began as an internet bookseller 27 years ago is now one of the world's most valuable companies and posted three consecutive record profits after losses in decades prior, reported Reuters. Jassy, 53, joined Amazon in 1997 after Harvard Business School. He founded AWS which has now grown into a cloud platform used by millions of customers.
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