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CEO Adam Selipsky is leaving AWS
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Longtime AWS executive Matt Garman will take over
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Garman said organizational change will come with the transition
After three years at the helm, Amazon Web Services (AWS) CEO Adam Selipsky is stepping down. Matt Garman, AWS’ SVP of sales, marketing and global services, will take the reins as CEO on June 3.
Selipski has spent nearly 15 years at Amazon, though his tenure was broken up by his stint as CEO of Tableau Software from 2016 to 2021. He joined Amazon in 2005 and stayed with the company until joining Tableau. Amazon wooed him back in May 2021 amid the chaos of the Covid pandemic to serve as CEO of AWS.
It’s not entirely clear why Selipski is leaving. A blog from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy stated Selipsky is poised to “move onto his next challenge,” though didn’t say where he might be headed.
In a post on LinkedIn, Selipsky said only “After almost 15 combined years at AWS, I am going to be moving on…I’m looking forward to taking some time off with family, while taking the opportunity to think about my next adventure!”
Incoming CEO Matt Garman has been with Amazon for nearly 18 years, having joined as an intern in 2005 and progressively working his way up from principal product manager to director, VP and most recently SVP in January 2020.
He takes control of a business that reached a $100 billion run rate for annual revenue under Selipsky, with Q1 2024 AWS revenue hitting $25 billion.
In his post, Jassy said Garman “has an unusually strong set of skills and experiences for his new role” and “knows our customers and business as well as anybody in the world, and has senior leadership experience on both the product and demand generation sides.”
For his part, Garman appears to be jumping in with both feet.
He noted in the Amazon blog that he plans to make some “organizational adjustments” in the coming weeks. He did not specify what kind of adjustments he plans to make or what teams will be impacted. The comment could have some AWS staffers on edge, though, given the tech giant's recent spate of layoffs.
“I look forward helping us move faster, invent more, and operate as one team to help our customers,” he concluded.