What Jeff Bezos Told Us About Leaving Amazon

**Carol Massar** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead, with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy, plus global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:31)
Well, it is one of the largest market cap companies. In fact, I think it's the fifth largest. We're talking about Amazon, founded by Jeff Bezos. He's still chair. It's now run by CEO Andy Jassy. He's now five years.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:44)
I can't believe that.

**Carol Massar** (0:45)
Since he took over as the chief executive officer.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:46)
It seems like just yesterday.

**Carol Massar** (0:47)
It does. So how time flies.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:49)
It really does.

**Carol Massar** (0:50)
Hey, and what's interesting is, Jassy was, as Brad Stone writes in the cover story of Bloomberg Businessweek, he was once Jeff Bezos' deputy and the head of Amazon's cloud computing arm, massive computing arm. Five years into his tenure as CEO, he's killing projects, cutting staff, pleasing Wall Street, and steering the everything store through its greatest challenge yet.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:11)
His impact and role at Amazon. It's the cover story of the new issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. It's also the Bloomberg big take. For more, let's head to the Bloomberg News, San Francisco Bureau. It's where we find Brad Stone. He's the editor of Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine. You can read it online at bloomberg.com on the Bloomberg and pick up on newsstands.
Brad also is the author of several books too about Amazon, including the Everything Store. Brad, so much coverage when it comes to Amazon, especially of the post Bezos era. The thing that I want to know is why Andy Jassy still drives himself to work every day in a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. Seriously.

**Carol Massar** (1:47)
Is the Maserati at home?

**Tim Stenovec** (1:49)
Also, even, I don't know, I thought CEOs these days, from a security perspective, everything is so tight and secure. I know Bezos had a minivan for years too, but anyway.

**Brad Stone** (2:00)
I thought that was interesting.
They've got these corporate values that they promote internally and externally, and one of them is frugality, the idea that you're saving every dollar for the customer. Walmart does the same thing. I think the way, Andy is such an Amazonian. It's where he's worked his whole life. He embodies the principles, and so I think it shows up in his personal choices, which include, he wore to the Businessweek photoshoot what he called his eight-minute jacket, and it's a sport coat he literally bought in eight minutes and a scramble for a customer meeting once. It's just the kind of guy he is.

**Carol Massar** (2:39)
All right.
You know this company like no other. To mention, you wrote The Everything Store, you wrote Amazon Unbound. Why is now a really good time to be writing about Andy Jassy?

**Brad Stone** (2:50)
Yeah. I mean, for tech companies right now, there is only one thing that matters, and that is where are they in this great AI race, and do they have the leading models? Do they have the right partners?
What kind of money are they spending on data centers? This is what investors are watching, and with bated breath because the numbers are so large. And Amazon got a slow start. They had an opportunity to invest in Anthropic early, which they didn't. Some of their early models that they developed in-house haven't really been considered state-of-the-art, but I think it's become apparent over the past few months, maybe the past year, that Amazon's catching up in a number of ways. One, they've gone and Andy has formed partnerships with Anthropic, with OpenAI. OpenAI renegotiated its Microsoft deal, essentially, to avoid the exclusivity contract. Chat GPT models could be on AWS, Amazon Web Services.
Amazon redid Alexa, they call it Alexa Plus now, and they're making these chips, these Tranium chips that are in some ways competing with NVIDIA, and Amazon's offering is very Amazon-like. It's come to Amazon, you'll have a menu of all the models, and you'll do it more cost-effectively than you might elsewhere. And frankly, AWS is now growing at a pace that it hasn't grown in a couple of years. The market has sort of turned, and so it just happened to be five years for Andy Jassy, but you can make an argument now that Amazon has caught up, and it is one of the names that is leading us, whether we like it or not, into this new era.

**Tim Stenovec** (4:28)