Jeff Bezos officially hands over Amazon reins to AWS boss Jassy

Andy Jassy has officially succeeded Jeff Bezos as the CEO of Amazon.

Bezos announced his departure from the top of the company earlier this year, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) boss Andy Jassy replacing him as CEO. While the company initially listed Q3 as the transition date, it confirmed the handover of July 5 at a shareholder meeting in May.

As such, the mega-corporation’s investor relations page has now been updated to reflect Bezos’s new position as executive chair and Jassy as president and CEO of Amazon.

The 57 year-old Bezos said that he will dedicate more of his time to the Bezos Earth Fund charity and aerospace business Blue Origins – with the billionaire set to fly to space onboard a Blue Origin rocket on July 20.

Jassy meanwhile takes over a US$1.8 trillion company which, despite its dominant position in the market, has consistently faced PR difficulties largely of its own making surrounding intimidating and unsafe work conditions. A new profile from Bloomberg on Jassy suggests that the new CEO is more of a ‘human being’ and that his softer edge may help the company to save face.

Amazon is also being targeted by politicians around the world as the centre of multiple antitrust investigations, another quagmire that Jassy will have to navigate.