Andy Jassy, Amazon Chief Executive Who Founded Amazon Web Services

Andy Jassy is the president and chief executive officer of Amazon, a post he took over from founder Jeff Bezos in July 2021. He also sits on the company’s board of directors.

Before running the whole group, Jassy founded and led Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing arm that now produces a large share of Amazon’s operating profit. In 2026 he is steering the company through one of the largest spending plans in its history, aimed mainly at artificial intelligence capacity.

Education

Jassy holds a bachelor’s degree (AB) from Harvard University. He later returned to the same university for a Master of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, according to his Business Roundtable member profile.

Career

Jassy joined Amazon in 1997. Over the following years he held a number of leadership posts across the business, working on both consumer-facing and business-to-business projects.

His next step was the one that defined his career. He founded Amazon Web Services and led the unit from its first days, building it into a business that sells computing power, storage and software tools to companies over the internet.

The first major public service of the new unit was Amazon S3, a storage product for developers. AWS launched it on March 14, 2006, with a press release and a short blog post, according to the AWS News Blog.

Amazon’s annual report lists him as senior vice president of Amazon Web Services from April 2006 to April 2016. He was then named chief executive of AWS, a title he held until July 2021.

On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Bezos would step back from the top job to become executive chair of the board, and that Jassy would succeed him. In an email to staff, Bezos wrote that Jassy was “well known inside the company” and that he had his full confidence.

The handover took effect in the third quarter of 2021. Jassy became president and chief executive of Amazon in July of that year, while Bezos stayed on as executive chair.

Since taking charge, Jassy has written the company’s annual letter to shareholders. His letters have covered cost discipline in the retail network, the growth of AWS and the company’s bets on artificial intelligence, custom chips and satellites.

Current Roles

• President and chief executive officer, Amazon.com, Inc. (since July 2021)
• Member of the Amazon board of directors
• Trust member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Trustee, Rainier Scholars
• Chair of the board, Rainier Prep

Key Achievements

Building Amazon Web Services

Jassy is credited by Amazon as the founder of AWS. The unit started with basic storage and computing services and grew into the largest single source of profit inside the group.

• Amazon S3 launch: March 14, 2006
• AWS segment sales in 2025: $128.7 billion, up 20%
• AWS segment operating income in 2025: $45.6 billion

Growth Under His Leadership as CEO

Amazon’s revenue kept climbing after Jassy took over the top job. Net sales rose 12% in 2025 to $716.9 billion, against $638.0 billion in 2024, according to the company’s results release of February 5, 2026.

• Operating income 2025: $80.0 billion (2024: $68.6 billion)
• Net income 2025: $77.7 billion (2024: $59.2 billion)
• Operating cash flow, 2025: $139.5 billion, up 20%

A Large Bet on Artificial Intelligence

In the same release, Jassy said Amazon expected to invest about $200 billion in capital expenditures across the company in 2026. He named AI, chips, robotics and low earth orbit satellites as the main areas of demand.

His 2025 letter to shareholders, published in spring 2026, said the AWS AI business had passed an annual revenue run rate of $15 billion in the first quarter of 2026. It put the run rate of the in-house chips business, which includes Graviton, Trainium and Nitro, above $20 billion.

Chips, Robots and Satellites

Amazon has more than one million robots working in its fulfillment centers, handling tasks such as stowing, picking, sorting and moving goods, according to the 2025 letter.

The company’s satellite internet service, Amazon Leo, had more than 200 satellites launched by the time of that letter, with a commercial launch planned for mid-2026. Delta Air Lines has agreed to use the service for in-flight Wi-Fi from 2028.

In his earlier letter on the 2024 results, Jassy reported that more than 600 million Alexa devices were in use. He also noted that Prime two-day delivery, which began with about a million products, now covered more than 300 million items, with tens of millions available in one day or less.

The same letter set out the plan for the satellite network, then called Project Kuiper, to have more than 3,200 satellites in orbit over the following few years.

Investment in the Kingdom

Under Jassy, AWS announced plans at the LEAP conference in Riyadh to invest more than $5.3 billion (19.88 billion riyals) in cloud infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Amazon says its first AWS region in the Kingdom is on track to open in December 2026.

AWS has also expanded its work with HUMAIN, a company owned by the Public Investment Fund. The plan includes up to 50 megawatts of capacity in the Kingdom’s first AI Zone by 2028.

The Company in Numbers

• Net sales: $716.9 billion (2025)
• North America segment sales: $426.3 billion (2025)
• International segment sales: $161.9 billion (2025)
• AWS segment sales: $128.7 billion (2025)
• Net income: $77.7 billion (2025)
• Employees, full and part time: about 1,576,000 (end of 2025)
• Planned capital expenditures: about $200 billion (2026 outlook)
• Robots in fulfillment centers: more than one million (2026 letter)

In Their Own Words

In his letter to shareholders on the 2024 results, Jassy summed up his view of the company in four words: “It remains Day One.”

Speaking to employees at an all-hands meeting, in remarks published on Amazon’s news site, he recalled the uncertain early years of AWS: “Once we started focusing on controlling what we could control, we got to a much better spot.”

Jassy took over a company built by its founder, whose own story is told in our profile of Jeff Bezos. Amazon’s results for 2025 put the AWS unit he founded at $128.7 billion in yearly sales.

Read also: Amazon’s Bee adds a $74.99 wearable and a phone-mounted AI note taker