Jeff Bezos exits Amazon as CEO: What’s next for world’s richest man?

July 5, 1994, is a historic day in Amazon’s history and exactly 27 years later Jeff Bezos founder and owner — the world’s richest and most powerful business leader — stepped down as the company’s CEO. 

This transition even pushed Jeff Bezos to beat Bill Gates in becoming the richest person in the world, with a net worth of roughly $90 billion. If this doesn’t make your eyes pop out of their sockets we don’t know what will!

Amazon under Bezos

Apart from being the world’s richest man, Bezos is also a people person and one of the few CEOs who made a public commitment to fight racial disparities in the workforce. Under his leadership during the Covid-19 outbreak, Amazon’s employment force crossed over 1 million for the first time.

Most of these jobs were primarily in Amazon warehouses and delivery. The company even employed 250,000 people in the first three months after which another 100,000 were added during the pandemic.

And today over 1.13 million people comprise the Amazon family worldwide, as compared to the 750,000 workers just over a year ago.

Employee welfare

During the pandemic when nearly 20,000 employees caught the coronavirus, Bezos recommended spending $4 billion on pandemic-related costs. This included testing warehouse workers and providing them with personal protective gear.

Amazon heights

Slowly and steadily, Bezos took the organization to new heights and expanded its business in the fields of e-commerce, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and digital streaming among many others. Amazon is regarded as a valuable brand and has a market value of over $1.7 trillion. 

What now?

Jeff Bezos is all set to embrace his new role as an executive chairman. While Bezos will largely stay out of the day-to-day running of Amazon, he will concentrate on his other company—Blue Origin and its space initiatives. Yes, he’s probably preparing to take off to space right now.