AWS CEO Selipsky departs: 'The future is bright for AWS'; Garman named new CEO

In a blockbuster announcement today, AWS CEO Adam Selipsky says he’s leaving AWS on June 3, and will be replaced by long-time AWS executive Matt Garman.

After three years of leading the world's largest cloud company Amazon Web Services, CEO Adam Selipsky is leaving after spending nearly 15 years at AWS.

AWS' Matt Garman, currently senior vice president of AWS sales, marketing and global services, will become the CEO of the $100bn cloud and AI giant.

"Leading this amazing team and the AWS business is a big job, and I'm proud of all we've accomplished going from a start-up to where we are today," said Selipsky (pictured) in a statement today, who will effectively step down as CEO on 3 June.

"In the back of my head I thought there might be another chapter down the road at some point, but I never wanted to distract myself from what we are all working so hard to achieve," AWS' CEO said. "Given the state of the business and the leadership team, now is an appropriate moment for me to make this transition, and to take the opportunity to spend more time with family for a while, recharge a bit, and create some mental free space to reflect and consider the possibilities."

Selipsky was hired as CEO of AWS in 2021 after its former CEO Andy Jassy was promoted to CEO of parent company Amazon. Selipsky has helped increase sales to a $100bn annual run rate and drove innovation, particularly around AI, in his three years as CEO.

"I am so grateful for all that I've learned about technology, leadership, organisation, and culture at Amazon. Helping all of our customers and partners to build has been an amazing experience," said Selipsky.

Selipsky was one of the first vice presidents AWS hired back in 2005. He spent 11 years leading AWS sales, marketing and support before leaving to become CEO of Tableau. He left Tableau in 2021 to rejoin AWS as CEO.

"Matt [Garman] and the AWS leadership team are ready for this next big opportunity. I'm excited to see what they and you do next, because I know it will be impressive. The future is bright for AWS (and for Amazon)."

Matt Garman Is The New CEO Of AWS

Matt Garman joined AWS in 2006 as a project manager for software development for AWS EC2.

He worked his way up the ranks at AWS for 17 years, including vice president of AWS Compute Services, then was appointed SVP of AWS sales, marketing and global services in 2020.

In an interview with CRN US in November, Garman said generative AI is a focus point for his company.

"The potential going into 2024 is generative AI is going to accelerate customers' move to the cloud," Garman told CRN. "We're still in the early stages of cloud adoption and growth, and there is way more potential ahead of us than behind us."

Amazon's CEO Jassy said Garman has an "unusually strong set of skills and experiences" for his new role as AWS' CEO.

"He's very customer focused, a terrific product leader, inventive, a clever problem-solver, right a lot, has high standards and meaningful bias for action, and in the 18 years he's been in AWS, he's been one of the better learners I've encountered," said Jassy. "Matt 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. I'm excited to see Matt and his outstanding AWS leadership team continue to invent our future—it's still such early days in AWS."