Amazon’s latest round of layoffs is set to hit 16,000 corporate employees starting Wednesday — with the tech titan suggesting artificial intelligence will do their work, instead.
The firings come after Amazon said in October it was laying off 14,000 corporate workers — with the goal of trimming its 1.58 million-strong workforce by nearly 10% — and after it and other big tech companies were widely viewed as over-hiring during the COVID pandemic.
The e-commerce giant has explicitly linked the layoffs to increased use of AI, particularly in corporate and technology functions.
“Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” Amazon senior vice president Beth Galetti wrote in October.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones),” she explained.
“We’re convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Amazon’s President and CEO Andy Jassy said last summer new tech could create new job opportunities – though he also admitted it could bring “efficiency gains” by helping to reduce the overall workforce.
People familiar with this week’s layoffs told Reuters that the layoffs would hit teams across Amazon Web Services, retail, Prime Video and human resources, though details were not immediately known.
The layoffs come amid high hopes for AI’s potential to boost productivity — and concern it could lead to widescale firings.
AI killed some 55,000 jobs in the US last year, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
On the consumer side of things, Amazon has embedded artificial intelligence across its core products, rolling out generative AI tools that handle shopping, voice interaction and task automation.
The company has upgraded its virtual assistant Alexa with large language models, introduced an AI shopping assistant that answers complex product questions, and deployed internal AI assistants designed to boost employee productivity and software development.
There are still occasional signs of human error.
Amazon’s management on Tuesday mistakenly emailed some employees in its AWS division, notifying them of layoffs before the official announcement was made, according to Reuters.
The missive, signed by AWS senior vice president Colleen Aubrey, incorrectly stated that affected employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been informed.
The email referenced the layoffs under the internal codename “Project Dawn” and pointed to a blog post from Amazon’s HR chief that had not yet been published, Reuters reported.
At the time the message was sent, Amazon had not formally notified affected employees or publicly confirmed the scope of the cuts.
Asked for comment, Amazon referred The Post to a Wednesday blog post by Galetti.
She said the company has been working since October to reduce management layers, increase ownership and strip out bureaucracy, but that not all units completed that work at the same time.
“While we’re making these changes, we’ll also continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future,” Galetti wrote.
“We’re still in the early stages of building every one of our businesses and there’s significant opportunity ahead.”
Galetti said the latest cuts will hit employees worldwide, with US-based workers getting 90 days to look for another gig within Amazon and timelines varying in other countries depending on labor laws there.
Employees who do not land new roles or opt not to pursue one will get severance and other benefits, she said.
Galetti also sought to tamp down concerns that Amazon is entering a recurring cycle of mass layoffs, saying broad reductions every few months are not the plan, though teams will continue to reassess staffing levels based on factors like their ability to innovate for customers.
Amazon, which has a market capitalization of $2.6 trillion, said Tuesday that it was closing all of its physical Go and Fresh grocery stores — with some of those locations being converted into Whole Foods supermarkets.
Shares of Amazon fell 0.7% Wednesday morning, with the stock trading around $243 a share.
Recent years have seen Amazon pour billions into AI infrastructure, expanding data centers and supercomputing capacity to handle the massive computing demands of generative models.
The backbone of the AI push runs through Amazon Web Services, which has positioned itself as a central hub for building and deploying AI systems.
AWS offers customers and internal teams access to the building blocks of AI, known as foundation models, through its Bedrock platform. It also sells AI-powered tools aimed at automating business workflows, customer service and coding.
The company has also leaned on AI to streamline internal operations, reduce manual work and speed decision-making — efficiencies that Amazon leadership has repeatedly cited as a reason it can operate with fewer layers and fewer corporate roles.
