- Amazon has had two CEOs in its history.
- Jeff Bezos was CEO from 1994 to 2021.
- Andy Jassy took over in 2021 and is the current CEO.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was the CEO of Amazon for 27 years.
In 2021, Bezos announced he was stepping down as the tech giant’s chief executive officer, telling shareholders that he would officially leave the position on July 5, the same day Amazon was incorporated in 1994.
In a letter to employees, Bezos said he would transition to executive chairman to focus on “new products and early initiatives.”
His replacement was Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy, a 24-year Amazon veteran at the time.
Jeff Bezos: Amazon CEO from 1994 – 2021
As founder and the company’s first CEO, Bezos got Amazon off the ground.
In the first month of the company’s launch, Amazon sold books to people in all 50 states and more than 45 countries. Bezos then took Amazon public in 1997, less than three years after it was founded.
Bezos is also credited with creating a frugal company culture. He said in 2014 that Amazon’s employee perks weren’t the same as other tech companies.
Today, Amazon is one of the world’s five largest public companies.
Bezos and other tech CEOs were called to testify before Congress in 2020 over antitrust concerns, particularly over its treatment of third-party sellers on its platform.
Andy Jassy: Amazon CEO from 2021 – present
Jassy took the helm of Amazon in 2021 and spent his first full year in the post in 2022, a difficult year for Amazon’s business.
Jassy addressed those challenges in his second annual letter to shareholders in early 2023. Amazon layoffs in 2022 impacted a total of 27,000 jobs, including to its Alexa division and physical Amazon stores.
Jassy said he wanted to generate “meaningful returns” from more successful areas of the company. In the letter, he suggested that large language models could be one of the areas he’s more bullish on. He called generative AI “a big deal” for Amazon and its customers.
Later in 2023, Jassy tapped Rohit Prasad, SVP and head scientist for Alexa, to lead Amazon’s AI group and report directly to him. Jassy has added or replaced at least eight executives in his top Amazon leadership team since becoming CEO in 2021.
Katie Canales contributed to an earlier version of this report.
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