Andy Jassy

Andy Jassy
Born	Andrew R. Jassy 13 1, 1968
Birthplace	Scarsdale, New York, U.S.
Nationality	American
Occupation	Business executive
Title	President and CEO of Amazon
Known for	Amazon Web Services, Amazon Music
Education	Harvard University (BA, MBA)
Children	2

Andrew R. Jassy (born January 13, 1968) is an American business executive who has served as the president and chief executive officer of Amazon since July 2021, succeeding the company's founder, Jeff Bezos. Before assuming the top role at one of the world's largest companies, Jassy spent nearly two decades building Amazon Web Services (AWS) from an internal concept into a dominant force in cloud computing, serving as its senior vice president and CEO from 2003 to 2021. Under his leadership, AWS grew into a business generating tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue and became the primary profit engine of Amazon. Raised in Scarsdale, New York, Jassy attended Harvard University for both his undergraduate and graduate education before joining Amazon in 1997. As CEO, Jassy has steered Amazon through a period of significant organizational restructuring and has directed substantial investment into artificial intelligence and generative AI technologies.

Early Life

Andrew R. Jassy was born on January 13, 1968, and grew up in Scarsdale, New York, a suburban community in Westchester County. He is Jewish.

Jassy attended Scarsdale High School, graduating in 1986. He grew up as an avid sports fan, a personal interest that would remain with him throughout his adult life and career.

Education

Jassy enrolled at Harvard College, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree. During his time as an undergraduate at Harvard, Jassy was involved with student media; a 1989 article in The Harvard Crimson referenced his participation in campus activities.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Jassy worked for several years before returning to Harvard to attend Harvard Business School, where he earned a Master of Business Administration degree. It was at Harvard Business School that Jassy first crossed paths with Jeff Bezos, who visited the campus as a speaker during the early years of Amazon. Jassy has cited this encounter as influential in his decision to join the company upon graduation.

Career

Early Years at Amazon

Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, shortly after completing his MBA at Harvard Business School. He entered the company during its early phase as a primarily online bookseller that was beginning to expand into other retail categories. In his initial years at Amazon, Jassy served in a variety of roles, including a period as a "shadow" technical advisor to CEO Jeff Bezos — a role within the company in which a rising executive works closely alongside Bezos to observe and participate in high-level decision-making across the organization. This position gave Jassy direct exposure to Amazon's corporate strategy and operational philosophy and is regarded within Amazon as a proving ground for future senior leaders.

Founding and Leading Amazon Web Services

In 2003, Jassy was tasked with developing what would become Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's cloud computing division. The concept behind AWS emerged from discussions between Jassy and Bezos about the company's core competencies, particularly its expertise in running large-scale, reliable technology infrastructure. Jassy has described the genesis of AWS as a recognition that Amazon had built significant capabilities in areas such as computing, storage, and database management, and that these capabilities could be offered as services to external developers and businesses.

AWS launched publicly in 2006 with a suite of infrastructure services including Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service) and Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). Under Jassy's leadership as senior vice president, and later as CEO of the AWS division, the cloud business grew from a nascent experiment into Amazon's most profitable segment. By the mid-2010s, AWS had established a dominant market position in infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS), serving millions of customers ranging from startups to large enterprises and government agencies.

Jassy oversaw the expansion of AWS from a handful of services to a portfolio of more than 200 distinct cloud offerings, encompassing areas such as machine learning, analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), and security. He also led the geographic expansion of AWS, establishing data center regions across multiple continents to serve the growing global demand for cloud infrastructure.

A 2015 profile in Fortune described Jassy as the key architect of AWS's strategy, noting his role in defining the pricing, product development, and competitive positioning that allowed AWS to maintain market leadership even as major competitors including Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform entered the market. The Financial Times reported in 2016 on the dual nature of AWS under Jassy's management — serving both as a technology platform for external customers and as the internal infrastructure backbone for Amazon's own retail and digital media operations.

Jassy also played a role in the development of Amazon Music, one of the company's digital media services.

CEO of Amazon

On February 2, 2021, Amazon announced that Jassy would succeed Jeff Bezos as president and CEO of the company, with the transition taking effect on July 5, 2021. Bezos, who had founded Amazon in 1994, transitioned to the role of executive chairman. The Wall Street Journal reported that the appointment reflected Jassy's long tenure and deep alignment with Amazon's corporate culture and operational principles, as well as the strategic importance of AWS to Amazon's overall business.

Organizational Restructuring and Layoffs

As CEO, Jassy has overseen multiple rounds of organizational restructuring at Amazon. In early 2026, Amazon announced another significant round of layoffs, with reports indicating that approximately 16,000 corporate positions were to be eliminated. Business Insider reported that the layoffs were part of a broader effort by Jassy to reduce bureaucracy and implement what the publication characterized as a "cultural reset" within the company. Reporting from The Times of India indicated that approximately 14,000 corporate positions were set to be cut, with Jassy stating that the reductions were "not about cost" but about streamlining the organization.

Artificial Intelligence Strategy

Under Jassy's leadership, Amazon has made substantial investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI. In early 2026, the Financial Times reported on a $200 billion AI spending plan led by Jassy, aimed at strengthening AWS's competitive position in the AI infrastructure market. The report noted that the spending drive followed concerns that Amazon had fallen behind competitors such as Microsoft and Google in capitalizing on the early generative AI boom, particularly in the wake of the rapid adoption of products like ChatGPT.

In June 2025, Jassy published an internal message to Amazon employees sharing his perspectives on generative AI, which was subsequently made public on Amazon's corporate news site. The memo outlined Jassy's view of how generative AI would reshape Amazon's businesses and the broader technology industry.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2026, Jassy addressed questions about whether AI company valuations constituted a speculative bubble. The Register reported that Jassy "hedged" on the question, declining to make definitive pronouncements about whether AI companies' worth was being inflated.

Trade Policy and Tariffs

In January 2026, Jassy commented publicly on the impact of tariff policies introduced by President Donald Trump on Amazon's business. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Jassy stated that tariffs had started to "creep" into the prices of some items sold on Amazon, as sellers who had initially tried to absorb the increased costs began passing them on to consumers. The comments were also reported by Axios, which noted that Jassy made the remarks during the Davos gathering.

Personal Life

Jassy married Elana Caplan in 1997. The couple has two children.

Jassy is an avid sports fan. He has been a part owner of the Seattle Kraken, the National Hockey League expansion franchise based in Seattle, and has spoken publicly about his interest in professional sports.

Recognition

Jassy's leadership of AWS drew significant attention from business and technology publications over the course of his career. Fortune profiled him in 2015 as the executive behind Amazon's cloud computing empire, noting the scale and impact of the business he had built. The Wall Street Journal published multiple in-depth profiles of Jassy at the time of his appointment as Amazon CEO, examining his career trajectory from Harvard Business School graduate to the leader of one of the world's most valuable companies.

His appointment as CEO in 2021 generated substantial media coverage, with outlets including Business Insider, the Financial Times, and Bloomberg reporting on his background and management style.

Legacy

Jassy's principal contribution to the technology industry has been the creation and scaling of Amazon Web Services, which fundamentally changed the way businesses and developers access and use computing infrastructure. Before AWS, organizations were required to purchase and maintain their own physical servers and data centers; AWS popularized the model of renting computing power, storage, and other services on demand via the internet — the model now known as cloud computing.

The Financial Times noted in 2016 that AWS under Jassy's leadership had become a platform upon which a significant portion of the internet's infrastructure relied, with customers including major enterprises, government agencies, and a large proportion of technology startups. The Wall Street Journal reported that Jassy's stewardship of AWS was the primary factor in his selection as Bezos's successor, reflecting the degree to which cloud computing had become central to Amazon's identity and financial performance.

As CEO of Amazon, Jassy has been responsible for navigating the company through a period marked by post-pandemic adjustments, a tightening labor market, increased regulatory scrutiny, and the rapid emergence of generative AI as a transformative technology. His decisions regarding large-scale investment in AI infrastructure represent a strategic bet on the continued centrality of cloud computing — and Amazon's position within it — in the AI era.

References

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