Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, announced that he plans to step down as CEO this year. In Q3 he’ll transition to the role of Executive Chair of the Amazon board, at which point Andy Jassy will take over as CEO. 

“In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives,” Bezos wrote in a letter to Amazon employees. “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have.” From the letter, it sounds like Bezos intends to use the time he has outside of running Amazon’s day-to-day operations to focus on other initiatives, including the “Day 1 Fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.”

Despite stepping down from the top role at Amazon, Bezos says “this isn’t about retiring,” so it seems we can expect him to remain involved at the top of the company. Amazon’s incoming CEO Andy Jassy isn’t exactly a household name like Bezos has become, but as the leader of AWS, he’s already in charge of what is arguably the most important piece of Amazon’s business.