The 5 Biggest AWS Executive Departures Of 2024

Here are the five most important Amazon Web Services executives who left this year that you need to know about.

Amazon Web Services saw the departures of several important top executives in 2024, including former CEO Adam Selipsky and longtime artificial intelligence innovator Matt Wood.

The Seattle-based worldwide leader in cloud computing currently owns 31 percent share of the global cloud services market.

AWS’ annual revenue run rate is now at a record $110 billion after generating $27.5 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2024.

AWS is the most profitable business unit inside its $159 billion parent company Amazon. AWS’ operating income for its most recent third quarter was $10.4 billion, up 48 percent year over year compared to $7 billion in 2023 in the same quarter.

Big AWS Hires

Before jumping into the five biggest AWS executive exits of 2024, it is key to know that the cloud and AI behemoth did hire some top executive talent this year as well.

Some big AWS hires in 2024 included David Luan, former CEO and co-founder of AI startup Adept; Peter Chen, former CEO and co-founder of AI robotics automation company Covariant; and Baskar Sridharan, Google Cloud’s former vice president of engineering for GCP.

CRN breaks down the five biggest AWS executive departures of 2024 that you need to know about.

Matt Wood

Former AWS Position: Vice President, Artificial Intelligence

Years At AWS: 14

New Company/Position: PwC; U.S. And Global Commercial Technology And Innovation Officer

Matt Wood, AWS’ longtime AI innovator and frequent on-stage keynote speaker, left AWS in late 2024 as the company’s vice president of artificial intelligence.

Wood worked across AWS cloud businesses—including helping to launch Lambda, Kinesis, SageMaker, DeepRacer, Athena, and EMR—with a special focus on data, analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.

He first joined AWS in 2010 and has been part of every AWS re:Invent conference since it began in 2012. “When I joined AWS, the cloud computing landscape was just beginning to take shape. It has been an extraordinary journey to be part of a team that has fundamentally transformed how businesses operate, grow, and innovate,” said Wood on LinkedIn when he announced his departure.

In October, Wood joined financial services giant PwC as its new U.S, and global commercial technology and innovation officer.

Within a few weeks of Wood joining PwC, AWS and PwC announced a strategy collaboration agreement between the two companies aimed at driving innovation around cloud and GenAI services.

Ashish Dhawan

Former AWS Position: Managing Director, Worldwide Head of Sales, Enterprise Workloads

Years At AWS: 5

New Company/Position: NetApp; Chief Revenue Officer and General Manager of NetApp’s Cloud Business Unit

Ashish Dhawan was AWS’ enterprise workload business leader for years, tasked with helping large AWS customers migrate their infrastructure and modernize their applications.

Dhawan spent over five years at AWS, most recently as managing director and worldwide head of enterprise workload sales, where he led a $6 billion business. He was tasked with helping AWS’ largest customers migrate their infrastructure and modernize their applications.

He left AWS in early 2024 to join NetApp to lead the storage company’s cloud sales strategy.

NetApp said the company created the role specifically for Dhawan in order to support NetApp’s commitment to the cloud with Dhawan leading the cloud sales team.

Bratin Saha

Former AWS Position: VP and GM, AI and Machine Learning

Years At AWS: 6 Years

New Company/Position: DigitalOcean; Chief Product and Technology Officer

After six years of helping develop AWS’ artificial intelligent and machine learning strategy, Bratin Saha left the company in June.

At AWS, he led the creation of one of the fastest-growing AWS businesses and helped to build the multibillion-dollar AWS generative AI business through products like Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Q, Amazon Bedrock, Vision and Language AI, as well as applied AI services to industry specific solutions in the industrial and healthcare markets.

From 2018 until 2024, Saha was AWS vice president and general manager for AI and machine learning and data infrastructure.

In June, Saha became chief product and technology officer of DigitalOcean to lead the company’s product, development, infrastructure and security strategy.

Ahmed Shihab

Former AWS Position: Vice President of AWS Infrastructure Hardware

Years At AWS: 8

New Company/Position: Microsoft Azure; Corporate Vice President Of Azure Storage

AWS’ vice president of infrastructure hardware, Ahmed Shihab, left in 2024 after an eight-year stint with the company to join AWS rival Microsoft.

At AWS, Shihab was responsible for the innovation, building and operations of all the company’s storage and compute systems.

Shihab joined AWS’ rival Microsoft in early 2024 as the company’s new corporate vice president of Azure Storage. In his Microsoft role, he is tasked with building out Azure storage services that will compete against AWS services.

Adam Selipsky

Former AWS Role: CEO

Years At AWS: 15

New Company/Position: Unknown

After 15 years with AWS, CEO Adam Selipsky exited his cloud company this year to the shock of many.

“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,” Selipsky said in May. “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 first joined AWS during its inception in 2005 as vice president of worldwide marketing, sales and support. He was named AWS CEO in May 2021.

With Selipsky at the helm, AWS’ annual revenue run rate soared to over $100 billion while the cloud leader’s innovations, particularly around AI, continued.

He officially left the company on June 3 to let AWS veteran Matt Garman take over the reins.

“I’m looking forward to taking some time off with family, while taking the opportunity to think about my next adventure,” he said in May.

Selipsky has still not joined another company as of mid-December.