CEO of Amazon's most-profitable business is leaving, here's what CEO Amazon Jassy said

Amazon's cloud computing giant,

Amazon Web Services

(AWS), is seeing a leadership change.

Amazon

CEO

Andy Jassy

announced the same in an email to employees.

Adam Selipsky

, who's been at the helm since 2021, is stepping down next month. Taking his place will be

Matt Garman

, the current head of sales and marketing for AWS. Selipsky, who has led Amazon Web Services since 2021, will relinquish his role next month “to move onto his next challenge,” wrote Jassy in an email to employees.

What makes AWS, the Amazon's cash machine

AWS is the crown jewel of Amazon, generating over 60% of its operating income.

It fuels the company's ability to invest in other areas. The cloud unit recently reported its strongest sales growth in a year and is on track to surpass $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. The cloud unit is also the world's largest seller of rented computing power and data storage. AWS reported the strongest sales growth in a year last quarter and is on pace to bring in more than $100 billion in revenue over the course of a year for the first time.

One key area where AWS is playing catch-up is artificial intelligence (AI). Competitors like Microsoft and Google have taken the lead in large language models, the technology behind AI tools like ChatGPT. However, Amazon is making strides – executives recently announced a multi-billion dollar revenue stream for their generative AI operations.
Jassy, who himself led AWS before becoming CEO of Amazon, highlighted Garman's customer focus, product leadership, and problem-solving skills. “Matt has an unusually strong set of skills and experiences for his new role,” said Jassy, who led AWS from its inception in the early 2000s until he was named to Amazon’s top job in 2021. “He’s very customer focused, a terrific product leader, inventive, a clever problem-solver, right a lot, has high standards and meaningful bias for action.”

Garman started his career at Amazon as an MBA intern
Interestingly, Selipsky was Jassy's right-hand man during AWS's early days, overseeing sales, marketing, and other crucial functions. He left Amazon in 2016 but returned three years ago. Garman's appointment might come as a surprise to some AWS employees who expected him to take the top job earlier. He's a veteran at AWS, starting as an intern in 2005 and eventually becoming one of the unit's first product leaders.
The news caused a slight dip in Amazon's share price, but the stock is still up over 20% year-to-date.