AWS Adds Adam Selipsky, 11-Year Company Vet, As CEO

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has added a new CEO in Adam Selipsky, who previously worked at the company for 11 years, according to a company blog post.

Selipsky was one of the first vice presidents hired in 2005 and ran AWS’s Sales, Marketing and Support until 2016, the post stated. At that time, he became the CEO of Tableau, a role he has had for the last four and a half years.

The post stated Tableau did well during Selipsky’s time there, with the value of the company quadrupling and going through a fundamental business change from perpetual licenses to subscription licenses. The company was acquired by Salesforce in 2019.

Selipsky “brings strong judgment, customer obsession, team building, demand generation and CEO experience to an already very strong AWS leadership team,” according to the post, which added that because he had previously worked at the company for over a decade, he understood the culture there.

AWS has $51 billion in revenue that has grown 28 percent year over year, the post stated. But the there’s still further to go, as there is less than 5 percent of the global IT spend in the cloud. That number is likely to change in the coming years as technologies become more advanced and AWS offers more products.

Selipsky will return to the company on May 17, and the next weeks after that will be spent on the transition before the move happens in the third quarter, according to the post.

Amazon has been having a good year financially, reporting over $100 billion in fourth quarter net sales.

The company had another recent transition of power, with Jeff Bezos giving up the CEO spot in favor of one as executive chair. Now, the CEO role will go to Andy Jassy.

Bezos said of his tenure as CEO that the company does “crazy things together and then make[s] them normal,” citing customer reviews, one-click ordering and personalized recommendations as three of the primary innovations.