Company shares and new head

Amazon shares rose 7% in the past two trading days after CEO Jeff Bezos handed over to Andrew Jassy, who headed AWS's cloud division. A big boost to the stock was the Pentagon's decision to cancel a $10bn cloud contract with Microsoft.

Amazon (AMZN) shares rose 7% in the last two trading days, the biggest increase in 10 months.

Investors welcomed new Amazon chief Andrew Jassy, who took over as CEO on 5 July to replace founder Jeff Bezos.

Amazon shares rose 4.7 per cent on Tuesday after the Pentagon announced it was cancelling a $10bn cloud computing contract with rival Microsoft Corporation (MSFT).

Amid these two pieces of significant news for the company, Amazon's market capitalisation of $1.8 trillion came close to the highest valuation of $2 trillion reached by Apple (AAPL) and Microsoft.

Microsoft and Amazon to share Pentagon's JEDI cloud contract

Some analysts called the US Defense Department's decision this week a restatement of justice, as a previous decision to award a major cloud services contract exclusively to Microsoft may have been made under political pressure from former US President Donald Trump, known for his feud with Amazon CEO Bezos.

The Pentagon contract is more than just a big contract for Microsoft and Amazon it is more about reputation and reaffirming the company's leadership in the cloud computing market.

Microsoft shares were unchanged at the close of trading on Tuesday.

The new head of Amazon

Andrew Jassy is the best candidate to replace Bezos that Wall Street could imagine. Jassy has been with Amazon almost as long as Bezos and has led Amazon Web Services (AWS), the world's No. 1 cloud computing company that generates the highest profits for its parent company Amazon.com. Inc. Amazon's board sees Jassy as a visionary leader who will continue to expand the company's business beyond traditional retail, taking the tech giant to the next level.

Amazon is already testing its own robotic delivery services by air and land and has expanded into healthcare and original video content, competing with Netflix (NFLX), Disney (DIS) and smaller players like Hulu. Today Amazon is in the process of buying film studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for $9bn.