Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company's cloud computing division, is set for a leadership change next month with chief exec Adam Selipsky to step down from his role on 3 June, after a three-year tenure at the helm.

Selipsky, 57, has had a long association with AWS, spanning 14 years across two stints. He initially left AWS in 2016 to become the chief executive of Tableau Software, a Salesforce subsidiary, before returning in 2021 to take over the reins of AWS from Andy Jassy, who had been appointed as Amazon's chief executive.

Under Selipsky's leadership, AWS experienced rapid growth, doubling its sales from $45.4 billion in the year before his appointment to $90.8 billion in 2023. The division's operating income also nearly doubled during this period, reaching $24.6 billion.

However, AWS has faced criticism for being slow to roll out competitive generative artificial intelligence (AI) services, in the face of challenges from rivals like OpenAI. The company recently made its Amazon Q chatbot service broadly available for businesses.

Selipsky's successor will be Matt Garman, a senior vice president who has overseen sales and marketing at AWS. Garman has been with Amazon since 2005, initially joining as an intern and later becoming one of the company's first product managers.

While AWS has the largest share in the US cloud market, its dominance is under pressure from Microsoft's fast-growing Azure service, which is benefiting from its tie-up with OpenAI. Google, too, is expected to roll out new AI services at its annual developer conference.

AWS, Amazon's second-biggest business unit after e-commerce, contributes about 40 per cent to the company's top line and is widely regarded as its growth engine.

Selipsky's departure is not expected to cause significant disruption, as Andy Jassy, who founded and led AWS before becoming Amazon's chief executive, remains at the helm of the company.

Elsewhere, Amazon has announced plans to invest €7.8 billion in Germany through to 2040. The company plans to launch several data centres in the German state of Brandenburg by the end of 2025, with the investment set to support over 2,500 full-time jobs in local German businesses each year.

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