It's the end of an era at Amazon. In line with the release of its quarterly earnings, the company on Tuesday announced that founder Jeff Bezos will step down as CEO and assume the role of executive chair in the third quarter of 2021.
Andy Jassy, currently the CEO of Amazon Web Services, which has helped drive profits for the global e-commerce giant in recent years, will take over the top spot.
"Amazon is what it is because of invention," said Bezos in the release. "We do crazy things together and then make them normal. We pioneered customer reviews, 1-Click, personalized recommendations, Prime's insanely-fast shipping, Just Walk Out shopping, the Climate Pledge, Kindle, Alexa, marketplace, infrastructure cloud computing, Career Choice, and much more."
The company also delivered its best quarter ever by revenue with $125.56 billion coming out of the holiday season, compared with $87.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019.
In a letter to employees that was published on the company's blog, Bezos explained what he will focus on in his new role and commended his replacement.
"In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives," he wrote. "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."
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Swedish buy now, pay later company Klarna is making its highly anticipated public debut on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, the latest in a run of high-profile initial public offerings this year. The offering priced at $40 Tuesday, above the forecasted range of $35 to $37 a share, valuing the company at more than $15 billion. The valuation easily makes Klarna one of the biggest IPOs so far in 2025, which has been one of the busier years for companies going public. Other popular IPOs so far this year include the design software company Figma and Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin..
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison wrested the title of the world’s richest man from longtime holder Elon Musk early Wednesday as stock in his software giant rocketed more than a third in a stunning few minutes of trading. That is according to wealth tracker Bloomberg. A college dropout, the 81-year-old Ellison is now worth $393 billion, Bloomberg says, several billion more than Musk, who had been the world’s richest for four years. The switch in the ranking came after a blockbuster earnings report from Oracle. Forbes still has Musk as the richest, however, valuing his private businesses much higher.
