Ring founder Jamie Siminoff rejoins Amazon in new VP role

Jamie Siminoff has returned to Amazon as a vice president of product overseeing the company’s home security camera arm and related businesses.

Siminoff, the Ring founder and longtime CEO, left Amazon in 2023, five years after the Seattle tech giant acquired Ring for a reported $1 billion.

Former Discord and Meta exec Elizabeth (Liz) Hamren replaced Siminoff as Ring CEO in 2023.

“Liz is deciding what’s next and looking at opportunities inside and outside Amazon,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement.

Siminoff will head up a team that works on Ring, Amazon Key (in-garage delivery), Amazon Sidewalk (neighborhood wireless network), and Blink (security cameras).

“With this transition, we are excited to welcome Jamie back to the team — he’s an inventor at his core and has a lot of passion for how Ring can make customers’ lives better and easier,” the spokeperson said.

Siminoff started Ring in his Southern California garage in 2012, and was famously rebuffed by investors on Shark Tank.

Under Amazon, Ring has dramatically expanded its product lineup beyond its signature smart doorbells into a wide variety of home cameras, exterior smart lighting, home security systems, a vehicle dashboard camera and even a flying indoor security camera.

While the market for in-home cameras has matured over the past 10 years, it continues to be reshaped by new technologies, such as AI and drones.

In a blog post published by Amazon on Friday, Siminoff called the AI transformation ” a once-in-a-generation opportunity.”

Ring has also weathered a series of controversies inside Amazon, including revelations about its policies and practices for sharing video footage with law enforcement; and previously lax security measures that gave hackers access to private home cameras, allowing them to see and talk with children in footage that quickly went viral.

Amazon also reached a $5.8 million settlement with the FTC in 2023 over allegations that the company made misleading claims about its privacy and security practices, and failed to protect consumers’ video data from unauthorized access. Amazon disputed the claims.

Amazon’s devices unit is led by Panos Panay, Amazon’s senior vice president of Devices and Services, a longtime leader in the world of consumer technology who joined the company in 2023 after a long tenure with Microsoft.