Amazon executives overseeing Alexa, {hardware} group depart the corporate

Amazon has misplaced two high-profile executives who helped oversee the corporate’s {hardware} efforts.

Gregg Zehr, president of Amazon’s {hardware} analysis and growth group, often known as Lab126, has retired, the corporate confirmed to CNBC. Zehr is credited with inventing the massively profitable Kindle e-reader.

Tom Taylor, senior vice chairman of Amazon Alexa and a member of CEO Andy Jassy’s elite S-Workforce, can also be retiring, Amazon stated. Each Taylor and Zehr spent properly over a decade on the firm.

“We now have robust succession plans for all companies, and each these positions have been backfilled with robust inner leaders a while in the past,” an Amazon spokesperson stated in an announcement.

Enterprise Insider earlier reported on Zehr and Taylor’s departures.

For Jassy, it marks the newest high-profile exits at a time when Amazon is staring down a large number of challenges, from hovering inflation to slowing gross sales. Heather MacDougall, Amazon’s office well being and security chief, departed the corporate in September. In July, public coverage chief Jay Carney left to affix Airbnb, and 23-year Amazon veteran Dave Clark resigned as retail chief a month later.

Two outstanding Black leaders — operations government Dave Bozeman and Alicia Boler-Davis, senior vice chairman of worldwide buyer achievement — additionally introduced their departures in June.

Amazon stated it nonetheless maintains excessive retention charges. The typical tenure for vice presidents is about 10 years, and for senior vice presidents it’s “for much longer,” the spokesperson stated.

The manager exodus additionally comes as Jassy has been reining in spending throughout the corporate. Amazon has carried out a hiring freeze for company retail roles and has discontinued a variety of tasks in current months, starting from its Care telehealth service to its Glow video-calling projector.

WATCH: Amazon freezes company hiring in retail enterprise