Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder announced Tuesday, February 2 that he is stepping down as Amazon Chief Executive Officer (CEO) this summer after he founded the company 27 years ago. He will become the executive chairman and will be replaced by Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon Web Services (AWS) who joined Amazon in 1997.

Bezos said in his letter Tuesday he is stepping down because it will give him, “the time and energy I need to focus on Day 1 fund, the Bezos Earth Fund, Blue Origin, The Washington Post, and my other passions.” Bezos is deciding to step down from CEO just as Amazon’s market value is around $1.7 trillion. This officially means that Amazon is one of the most valuable companies in the world.

Blue Origin is Bezos’ space company he has been working on since 2000. Bezos started this rocket company to make space-traveling affordable and easy to access by using recyclable launch vehicles. Blue Origin has already achieved a lot of milestones. Last month, NASA selected Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Launch a successful flight test of its New Shepard capsule. However, it still has a lot of catching up to do, but with Bezos having more free time the company will continue to progress and move full speed ahead.

Jassy, who helped find AWS in 2003 has also been the CEO of AWS since April 2016, until Bezos decided to step down and hand over Jassy the CEO of Amazon. Jassy built AWS into a $40 billion business.  Bezos said in a letter to Amazon employees, “Andy is well known inside the company and has been at Amazon almost as long as I have. He will be an outstanding leader, and he has my full confidence.

Bezos stepping down as CEO is a major change in entrepreneurial American history. He is the second richest person in the world with a net worth of $196 billion. Elon Musk who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has just recently been claimed as the richest person in the world and is $1.5 billion richer than Bezos. In fact, Bezos could become the world’s first trillionaire as early as 2026

Bezos is deciding to step down as CEO in Q3 which is between July and August of 2021. However, this is not Bezos retiring he plans to continue working on projects outside of Amazon.