Amazon’s Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos has announced he will step down from the position later this year after steering the world-leading e-commerce firm for 27 years.

Bezos who was crowned the world richest man in 2020 with a net worth of $200 billion told Amazon employees that he will transition to the chairmanship position of the company’s executive board, where he will specialise in crafting ideas on new products and initiatives.

“Fellow Amazonians, I’m excited to announce that this Q3 I’ll transition to Executive Chair of Amazon Board. In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and initiatives,” part of the letter read.

Entrusted by Bezos, Andy Jassy, an American businessman and technopreneur who helped in the development of Amazon Web Services since its inception in 2006, will be the new CEO of the world’s fastest advancing commercial digital platform.

“Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence,” Bezos said as he piled praise on the incoming CEO.

Amazon started as an idea back in 1993. The company had no name and at the time, Bezos got asked questions like “What’s the internet?” The founding of Amazon, he said, was the answer to that question.

Today, Amazon has 1.3million employees, serves millions of customers and businesses around the world and recognized as one of the most successful firms on the global scale.

The drive to that massive success is, according to Bezos, invention – which he describes as the root of their success at Amazon.

“We’ve done crazy things together, and then made them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime’s insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, market place, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more,” said Bezos.

Bezos is also the founder and owner of Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is competing with Elon Musk’s SpaceX in space exploration.

As he leaves the CEO post, it is also worth noting that Bezos owns The Washington Post, a newspaper he acquired in 2013 at $250 million and redefined it through Artificial Intelligence-based technology.