Amazon said it would cut 14,000 corporate staffers this year in a mass layoff aimed at readying the company for wide adoption of AI technology.
The company noted that it would be hiring in key areas and would prioritize those who lost their jobs for those roles. But the company also said it wasn’t done with layoffs.
“We expect to continue hiring in key strategic areas while also finding additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains,” said Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience in a memo to employees that the company put on its public blog.
Galetti said Amazon needs to operate more leanly to achieve CEO Andy Jassy’s vision of operating like the world’s biggest startup. Jassy wants the company to remain nimble so it can adapt and change quickly as AI upends the technology sector.
“What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly. 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,” Galetti said. “We’re convicted 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 has over 350,000 corporate employees, according to a 2024 survey filed to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, so the cuts represent about 5% of the company’s overall staff.
In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a separate blog post to employees that efficiency gains from artificial intelligence would allow the company to eventually have a reduced human workforce.
It’s not the first round of massive layoffs for the tech giant. In 2023, the company cut 27,000 workers in its human resources department, Amazon Stores, Amazon Web Services and other divisions. At the time, Jassy attributed the job cuts to a worsening global economic outlook.
The cuts come as the US job market has showed warning signs for months, especially for young tech workers. There have been widespread concerns that generative AI could eventually replace many human workers as companies cut costs through greater automation. However, AI experts say a lot of these fears aren’t backed by substantial research.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
