Meet the Amazon execs most likely to replace Andy Jassy as CEO of $40 billion cloud business AWS

• Jeff Bezos named Amazon’s cloud boss Andy Jassy as his successor when he steps down later this year.
• That leaves a vacant role atop the $40 billion, market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud business.
• A few execs have made their mark on AWS and sit on Amazon’s leadership team, making them likely candidates for CEO.
• Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.

Jeff Bezos named Amazon Web Services boss Andy Jassy as his successor when he steps down later this year, leaving a vacant role atop the $40 billion, market-leading cloud business responsible for more than 60% of Amazon’s revenue.

While Amazon’s chief financial officer on Tuesday said the company hasn’t yet selected Jassy’s replacement, there are a few current execs who have made their mark on the cloud business and already have a seat on Amazon’s overall leadership team.

Three top AWS executives — infrastructure boss Peter DeSantis, sales and marketing chief Matt Garman, and head of utility computing services Charlie Bell — sit on Amazon’s senior leadership “S-team,” a group of about two dozens leaders from across the company who work closely together on key business decisions.

Meanwhile, Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels is another potential candidate for the CEO position. Although he doesn’t serve on the S-team, which may make him a longer shot, he has long acted as one of the public faces of the company’s cloud business and technical infrastructure.  

These names are among the 95 top executives who have helped Jassy run AWS, according to an internal org chart obtained by Insider. 

While Amazon could end up choosing a new AWS leader from outside the company, here are four top internal contenders:

Charlie Bell, senior vice president of utility computing services

Bell, who’s been at Amazon since 1998, is one of the most senior executives at the company.

Bell was responsible for the early development of AWS’s infrastructure team, leading a group of engineers across data centers, network, and servers. He’s one of the few S-team members from AWS.

Peter DeSantis, senior vice president of global infrastructure and customer support

DeSantis — who recently joined Amazon’s senior leadership team, called the S-team — runs all of AWS’s core infrastructure business.

DeSantis was one of the first employees of AWS and played a critical role building up its technology from its early days. Amazon recently promoted DeSantis from VP to SVP.

Matt Garman, vice president of AWS sales and marketing

Matt Garman has worked at Amazon almost as long as Andy Jassy. He started in 1998, and was promoted to VP of sales and marketing in January 2020. He’s also one of the few AWS executives on Amazon’s S-team senior leadership team.

Before Garman was put in charge of AWS’s sales and marketing, he spent 7 years running its compute services team. Prior to that, he was part of the core EC2 server team.

Werner Vogels, Amazon chief technology officer

Werner Vogels is chief technology officer of Amazon overall, but he has an important role within AWS, too. 

He joined Amazon in 2004 and has since helped grow the company’s cloud business from an application programming interface for its product catalog software to an industry leader.

Vogels, unlike the other executives on this list, is not on Amazon’s S-team leadership team and appears to have few direct reports, according to an org chart reviewed by Insider. 

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