Dive Brief:

• Andrew Jassy, CEO of Amazon Web Services, is the highest-paid employee at Amazon, with a base salary of $175,000 and stock awards of $35.4 million making for a total compensation of more than $35.6 million, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Jeffrey Wilke, CEO of Worldwide Consumer at Amazon, took home the second-highest compensation, of $32.9 million.
• Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, on the other hand, took home his usual salary of $81,840, with $1.6 million paid for his "security arrangements" at the office and while traveling. But because of his majority stock holdings in Amazon, Bezos is the second-richest person, behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates,  in the world, with a net worth of $75.6 billion, according to Bloomberg. 
• In his annual letter to shareholders at the end of 2016, Bezos touted AWS' achievements and its ability to allow organizations of all sizes to take advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence. Part of those advancements come in the form of Amazon's natural language products, those that power Alexa, and the ability for customers to access the technology using simple APIs, without requiring machine learning expertise. 

Dive Insight:

The cloud is a huge business for Amazon, reflected in the promotion of Jassy to CEO last year and in his compensation. AWS has by far the most successful cloud business in the industry, accounting for about 40% of the cloud market, almost double the combined market share of Microsoft, Google and IBM.  

In the past, Jassy has reflected on the market dominance of AWS, attributing it to experience, broad functionality, the fast rate of innovation and the company's partner ecosystem. A large part of its success also stems from reputation. By word of mouth, AWS is recognized as the leading cloud provider. When companies turn to the cloud, AWS is often the first place they look. 

Now more than 10 years old, AWS has reached market maturity and is still innovating at a quick pace, thanks to the leadership of decision makers like Jassy. The rest of the industry is starting to catch up, creating pathways for multiple successful players in the market, according to Jassy. However, he does recognize AWS had quite the head start and was so disruptive in the market other organizations had to respond.