NEW DELHI: Jeff Bezos is set to hand over the reins of Amazon to Andy Jassy on Monday, 27 years after he founded what was then a website to sell books and is now a $1.7 trillion behemoth shipping everything from toilet paper to pre-fabricated homes and buttressing much of the internet through its cloud business.
He will retain a key role in the company as executive chair, but will no longer focus on the day-to-day operation.
The world's richest person, with more wealth than some developed nations, instead, will turn his gaze to space, with his private exploration company Blue Origin.
To mark the new era, on July 20, Blue Origin is to take Bezos, his brother, aerospace pioneer Wally Funk, and a winner of a charity auction, on a short suborbital flight to space.
The change of guard will also free Bezos, to an extent, from those pesky questions as Amazon faces a torrent of regulatory scrutiny, pushback from workers and criticism from activists.
