Amazon said Tuesday that it is cutting about 14,000 corporate roles as the e-commerce giant expands its investment in AI.
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, said in a blog post that the layoffs are part of an effort to continue “reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets.”
“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),” Galetti wrote in the message that was initially shared with Amazon employees.
“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,” she continued.
As of July, Amazon employed nearly 1.55 million workers. Its corporate workforce is smaller than its warehouse workforce, accounting for about 350,000 roles, according to CNBC. The latest cuts represent a 4 percent reduction on the corporate side.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at this development in June, when he said the company expected to reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years given efficiency gains from AI.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy said at the time. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
