Amazon to cut 16,000 jobs as it shifts resources to AI

E-commerce behemoth Amazon is making another round of layoffs, according to a blog post on the company’s official website.

Amazon said the cuts will affect 16,000 corporate jobs. The company said it will give its employees 90 days to look for a new role internally within Amazon. Those who don’t find a new role will receive severance pay and other temporary benefits.

The company’s public statement, from Amazon’s Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti, clarified that the company will “continue hiring and investing in strategic areas and functions that are critical to our future.” 

While Amazon doesn’t explicitly state what that means, the New York Times reports that the company intends to shift resources to artificial intelligence and the data centers that AI requires. As mentioned in their report, Amazon spent around $125 billion last year on data centers and related expenditures.

“Some of you might ask if this is the beginning of a new rhythm — where we announce broad reductions every few months. That’s not our plan,” reads a blog post written by Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon. Galetti also emphasized that the company was “working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted.”

Last October, Amazon sources told Reuters that the company was planning its biggest round of layoffs ever and was set to cut 30,000 jobs. Days later, Amazon announced that it was laying off 14,000 employees, but it seems the 30,000 report was correct after all. With today’s announcement, Amazon will have laid off 30,000 workers total, and Galetti’s blog post adds some context to the situation.

“While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.”

While Amazon CEO Andy Jassy denied AI was responsible for the October layoffs, our colleagues at PC Mag note that Galetti provided employees with a different take at the time. (Disclosure: PC Mag and Mashable are both owned by the same parent company, Ziff Davis.)

“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet, and…we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” Galetti said last year.

In addition to this latest round of layoffs, Amazon also announced just yesterday that it was closing all of its physical Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh store locations to focus on Whole Foods Market and grocery deliveries under the Whole Foods brand.

Amazon currently employs roughly 1.5 million people.