Dave Brown, a longtime senior vice president at Amazon Web Services, plans to leave Amazon at the end of July for a new role outside the company and will be succeeded by Dave Treadwell, a top executive from Amazon’s e-commerce division.
What Changed
AWS CEO Matt Garman told staff Brown is departing after nearly 19 years—CNBC’s headline framed it as 18 years of senior cloud tenure—and thanked him for helping grow AWS technology, business, and teams.
Brown, in a separate memo, said it felt like “the right time for me to begin a new chapter” and that his organization is “in outstanding hands” under Treadwell, whom he called an exceptional leader with deep technical expertise, customer focus, and a passion for building strong teams.
| Role | Person | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Outgoing | Dave Brown, AWS SVP | Exit end of July; new role outside Amazon |
| Incoming | Dave Treadwell | Moves from Amazon e-commerce leadership |
| Announced by | Matt Garman, AWS CEO | Staff note Wednesday |
Brown’s AWS Legacy
Brown joined AWS early and was on the team that built EC2 in South Africa in the 2000s—one of AWS’s oldest and most foundational services, renting virtual slices of servers by the second for apps and websites.
More recently his portfolio spanned AWS compute and machine learning, including offerings such as Bedrock and SageMaker. He also sat on CEO Andy Jassy’s S-team—about 28 senior executives who report to Jassy and help set major company decisions—signaling how central his seat was beyond the cloud org chart.
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Explore High-Stakes Roles →Why the Timing Matters
The departure lands while AWS is riding strong AI demand. The unit logged 28% revenue growth in the first quarter, alongside Microsoft and Google in the cloud AI spending boom.
Putting an e-commerce veteran over compute and ML at AWS underscores how Amazon is blending retail-scale operating muscle with its cloud AI stack—just as competition for AI infrastructure and model platforms intensifies.
Amazon and Brown did not detail his next employer in the CNBC report.
Bottom Line
One of AWS’s founding-era leaders—EC2 pioneer, compute/ML SVP, and S-team member—is stepping out after nearly two decades. Dave Treadwell’s move from e-commerce into Brown’s seat puts a different Amazon leadership brand on the cloud unit’s most strategic AI and compute businesses as AWS keeps posting high-teens-to-high-20s growth off the AI cycle.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who is leaving Amazon Web Services?
A: Dave Brown, an AWS senior vice president, plans to leave at the end of July for a role outside Amazon after nearly 19 years. He helped launch EC2 and later oversaw compute and machine learning services including Bedrock and SageMaker.
Q: Who is replacing Dave Brown?
A: Dave Treadwell, a high-level executive from Amazon’s e-commerce division, will take over Brown’s organization, according to AWS CEO Matt Garman.
Q: Why is Brown’s exit notable?
A: Beyond his early EC2 role, Brown sat on Andy Jassy’s influential S-team and ran key AI/compute products while AWS is growing ~28% on AI demand—making the handoff a significant leadership shift inside Amazon’s most profitable growth engine.
