The news broke today that as of July 5th, Jeff Bezos will no longer be CEO of Amazon:
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos will step down on July 5, turning the helm over to cloud-computing boss Andy Jassy.
"We chose that date because it's sentimental for me, the day Amazon was incorporated in 1994, exactly 27 years ago," Bezos said Wednesday at Amazon's annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually.
Amazon announced in February that Bezos would leave his post later this year. Bezos will transition to executive chairman of Amazon's board and is expected to dedicate more time toward initiatives like the Bezos Earth Fund, his Blue Origin spaceship company, The Washington Post and the Amazon Day 1 Fund.
Yay, he's going to be focusing more on the totally-not-garbage WaPo!
The company said earlier this year that Bezos would be leaving.
What it didn't say is that it would be purchasing MGM Studios the same day in announced his official departure:
The deal is the second-largest acquisition in Amazon's history, behind its $13.7 billion purchase of Whole Foods in 2017.
Amazon said it hopes to leverage MGM's storied filmmaking history and wide-ranging catalog of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows to help bolster Amazon Studios, its film and TV division.
If you're wondering, MGM Studios makes the iconic James Bond films and the films are a specific part of the acquisition.
I can only assume that Bezos is looking to live out a dream of being a Bond villain.
Whether real or imaginary, only time will tell.
You may think this is entirely in jest, but think about it: Bezos is the billionaire founder of a world-changing tech company with an ideological streak and no hair, and he's retiring to focus (at least partially) on building spaceships.
