Two well-known executives who oversaw Amazon’s hardware ambitions have left the business.
The business confirmed to CNBC that Gregg Zehr, president of Amazon’s Lab126 hardware R&D division, has retired. The incredibly popular Kindle e-reader is attributed to Zehr.
Amazon also announced the retirement of Tom Taylor, senior vice president of Amazon Alexa and a member of CEO Andy Jassy’s prestigious S-Team. Taylor and Zehr both worked for the business for well over a decade.

A representative for Amazon said in a statement, “We have solid succession plans for our businesses, and both of these positions were backfilled with competent internal leaders some time ago.
Prior to their exits, Zehr and Taylor were covered by Business Insider.
For Jassy, it represents the most recent high-profile departure at a time when Amazon is facing numerous difficulties, including rising inflation and sluggish sales. Amazon’s director of workplace health and safety, Heather MacDougall, left the business in September. Public policy chief Jay Carney joined Airbnb in July, while Dave Clark, an Amazon veteran of 23 years, quit his position as retail president a month later.

In June, senior vice president of global customer fulfilment Alicia Boler-Davis and operations executive Dave Bozeman both announced their resignations.
According to Amazon, it still has great retention rates. The representative stated that the senior vice president term is “far longer” than the vice president tenure, which is roughly 10 years on average.
The executive exodus coincides with Jassy’s efforts to control expenditure across the organisation. In recent months, Amazon has stopped working on a number of projects, including its Glow video-calling projector and Care telemedicine service. It has also placed a hiring block for corporate retail positions.