Williams made the announcement after 12 years with Amazon and days after the company unveiled the next generation of several of its devices, including Echo, Fire TV and Ring.
He said in the post that he decided earlier this year to retire at the end of 2025 and that he has worked with Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices and Services Panos Panay to prepare for a smooth transition.
“I’ll leave with tremendous optimism for the future of Amazon’s Devices & Services business,” Williams said in the post. “The innovation pipeline is robust, and the team’s talent is unmatched. We have built an incredible builder culture and it has been so fun to deliver so many magical products into the hands of hundreds of millions of customers and iterate on them over multiple generations.”
Reuters reported Friday that Amazon announced Williams’ plans in a memo sent within the company Thursday (Oct. 2).
In the memo, Panay said Williams will remain an advisor to him and a member of the company’s S-team through the end of the year, according to the report.
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The S-team, or senior leadership team, is an elite group that advises Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, the report said.
In his memo, Panay also said that effective Thursday, several teams in the devices unit have been consolidated and that Tapas Roy, previously a vice president overseeing Fire TV product and engineering, has been appointed to Williams’ former position.
“Rob has had a big impact on the software and experiences of nearly all of the products we’ve created and shipped,” Panay said of Williams in the memo, per the report.
When announcing the latest versions of its devices on Tuesday, Amazon said several of them incorporate the company’s artificial intelligence assistant, Alexa+.
These include Echo devices that are purpose-built for Alexa+ and have better conversation detection than earlier models, Fire TV devices that use the AI assistant to help users find content they will enjoy watching, and Ring cameras that use it to provide a “smart doorbell attendant.”
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