Meet Andy Jassy: Next CEO of Amazon replacing Jeff Bezos
Andy Jassy may keep a low profile, but he has led the Amazon Web Services (AWS) to an impressive $50 billion revenue this year. The recently announced Amazon CEO will fill in the shoes of founder Jeff Bezos, who will now take over as the Executive Chairman. It's an important position, but Jassy is anyway responsible for giving Amazon the keys to the internet.
The 53-year-old American businessman grew up in Scarsdale, New York and graduated with honors from Harvard College, following it up with an MBA from Harvard Business School. As of November 2020, Jassy's net worth is estimated at $377 million. He is married to Elana Rochelle Caplan, a fashion designer for Eddie Bauer and they have settled in Seattle with two children.
Jassy had joined Amazon in 1997 as a marketing manager, but his seminal contribution comes from him founding AWS in 2003 with a team of 57 people. The concept of elastic cloud computing, which involved convincing internet entities into giving up local hosting and renting the same from AWS was initially dismissed by the likes of Oracle. AWS now hosts 42 percent of the top 10,000 websites.
Jassy was the natural choice to replace former CEO Bezos. Described as being uncannily similar to the Amazon founder, Jassy is known to micro-manage projects like Bezos and mimic his penchant for data-driven decision making that has guaranteed success in virtually anything Amazon touches. However, unlike his boss, Jassy has shown a passion for social and philanthropic issues involving underprivileged students and homeless.
From small beginnings tackling the needs of start-ups in 2003, Jassy took the nascent concept of cloud computing and refined it through trial and error until in 2015 it had virtually overshadowed the incumbents in the field. The might of AWS now allows Bezos and company to virtually Thanos snap entire social media platforms out of existence.
