Amazon promotes the top execs of its two main businesses to new 'CEO' titles

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Jeff Bezos

Michael Seto/Business Insider

Jeff Bezos

Amazon has promoted the leaders of its online retail site and cloud computing unit to the CEOs of their respective groups, making each of them more of a distinct business.

On Thursday, Amazon announced in a blog post that it's made Jeff Wilke the CEO of Worldwide Consumer and Andy Jassy the CEO of Amazon Web Services. Both CEO positions are newly created. Both men were previously senior VPs of those groups.

Jeff Bezos remains CEO of the entire company.

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In the post, Amazon wrote, "...as we've grown as a company and those three big pillars have also grown, we've decided it makes sense to change the titles of the leaders of those businesses-Jeff Wilke and Andy Jassy-to CEO Worldwide Consumer and CEO Amazon Web Services."

Amazon's e-commerce business reached $100 billion in revenue for the first time this year, while AWS is on track to hit $10 billion in annual revenue in 2016. Both Wilke and Jassy were early employees of Amazon and have played critical roles in turning the company into a tech juggernaut worth about $300 billion.

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Amazon noted in the blog post that the new appointments are not meant to be any reorganization, as it's more of a "recognition of of the roles they've played for a while."

But it could also be part of Amazon CEO Bezos' succession plan as the company matures into a massive business. Google, for example, followed a similar pattern when it turned itself into a holding company owned by a bigger entity called Alphabet last year. 

Bezos rarely says anything about his succession plan. But in a previous interview with Business Insider, he said there is a succession plan in place for him, although he didn't name who would eventually take over his position.

It could also signal Amazon's plan to possibly spin out AWS as a separate business, a move that would be welcomed by some Wall Street investors.

Bezos also made sure to celebrate the move in a tweet:

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Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through hispersonal investment company Bezos Expeditions.

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