What is Andy Jassy's Net Worth and Salary?
Andy Jassy is an American technology executive who has a net worth of $400 million. He has earned his fortune thanks to a long career with Amazon. At Amazon, Andy helped develop what would eventually become Amazon Web Services, the company's most-profitably division which powers large portions of the world wide web today.
On February 2, 2021 Jeff Bezos announced his intention to step down as CEO of Amazon in the third quarter of the year, with Jassy taking his place.
Early Life
Andy Jassy was born on January 13, 1968. He grew up in Scarsdale, NY where he attended Scarsdale High School. He then earned a bachelor's degree from Harvard, followed by an MBA – also at Harvard after a brief stint trying to launch a business with a friend.
Amazon
According to a recent interview, in 1997 he got a call from an Amazon recruiter. He hadn't quite graduated from business school yet. He landed the job, took his final exam in Boston on a Friday and started at Amazon in Seattle on Monday. Amazon went public three weeks later.
In 2002 Andy spent a year shadowing Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. One of the challenges Bezos was desperate to solve was how his software teams took so long to develop new products despite the fact that they had an army of engineers. One of Jassy's revelations was that the developers spent most of their time building out custom technical infrastructure than actually developing products. The revelation led to the idea that Amazon engineers should all be using the same tech building blocks. The success of what followed led to an idea – What if Amazon gave the same basic building blocks to the entire world wide web?
Amazon Web Services
In 2003, Amazon took a team of 57 people and founded Amazon Web Services (AWS). Amazon quickly learned that thousands of companies were eager to pay Amazon for web storage and hosting space.
By 2012 AWS adding more computers every day to its network than were used to run all of Amazon just a few years earlier.
Andy served as SVP of AWS until 2016 when he was promoted to CEO of AWS.
In 2020 AWS generated $45 billion in gross sales, 12% of company total. Profits generated by AWS were 63% of Amazon's total profits.
AWS is by far the most profitable division of Amazon. If AWS was its own standalone company, it would be worth at least $300 billion.
Amazon CEO
On February 2, 2021 Andy Jassy was revealed to be Jeff Bezos' successor. Andy officially took over from Bezos in July 2021.
REUTERS/Mike Blake via Alamy
Compensation and Stock Holdings
According to SEC filings, Andy earned a base salary of $384,000 while serving as CEO of AWS. With bonuses and option grants his annual compensation has regularly topped the tens of millions. For example, in 2016 he earned a total of $36 million. In April 2018 he was given a grant of 10,000 shares which vest in chunks in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. At the time of the grant, those shares were worth $14 million. As of this writing they are worth around twice that amount.
In total, according to the latest SEC filings, Andy has sold around $113 million worth of Amazon shares since the early 2000s. He continues to own approximately 94,000 shares that are worth around $330 million as of this writing.
2020 Salary
In 2020 Andy earned a total of $35.8 million according to a company filing. That year his base salary wa $175,000.
2021 Salary
According to a company filing submitted in March 2022, Andy Jassy's total compensation package in 2021 was valued at $212.7 million. A large portion of that value was made up of a one-time special grant of 61,000 shares that were awarded as a bonus for ascending to CEO. Approximately 80% of the shares granted vest over 5-10 years. Once again, his base salary was just $175 thousand but the company announced it would double his base to $350,000 going forward.
Personal Life
Andy has been married to Elana Rochelle Caplan since 1997. They married at the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel. Both Andy and Elana's fathers were senior partners at the law firm Dewey Ballantine. They have two children.
Real Estate
In 2009 Andy and Elana paid $3.1 million for a 10,000 square-foot home in Seattle's Capital Hill neighborhood.
In October 2020 they paid $6.7 million for a home in Santa Monica, California.
