Amazon said on Tuesday that it plans to reduce its corporate workforce by 14,000 jobs as it seeks to reduce bureaucracy, remove layers, and invest more in its AI strategy.
This marks the e-commerce giant’s second-largest job cuts since it slashed 22,000 jobs in 2022. Amazon had nearly 1.2 million employees as of October 31, 2024, of which more than 360,000 were in its corporate division, in administrative, sales, and executive roles.
In a memo shared with employees, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, wrote that the move is aimed at making the company “even stronger” by shifting resources to invest in its “biggest bets.”
Galetti acknowledged that the decision would be questioned in light of the company’s good performance, but argued that the layoffs are necessary because 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 (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). We’re convicted [sic] that we need to be organized more leanly [sic], with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” she wrote.
The layoffs come at a time when Amazon is investing heavily in tech infrastructure to build more compute capacity for offering AI services.
In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo to staff that the company would need fewer employees as it continues to roll out more AI agents. “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
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That focus is clearly visible if you consider the company’s expenditure on tech infrastructure. Amazon said it had spent $55.6 billion in the first half of its current financial year primarily on tech infrastructure to support the growth of its cloud services business, Amazon Web Services, according to its quarterly report.
The company’s revenue increased 13% to $167.7 billion in the second quarter compared to a year earlier. AWS accounted for 18% of total net sales.
Reuters reported on Monday that the company was planning to slash up to 30,000 jobs across human resources, devices and services, operations, and other departments.
The company has made smaller job cuts across different divisions. In January, Amazon reduced a small number of positions in its Communications and Sustainability departments.
Amazon said it is offering most affected employees 90 days to look for a new role internally, and its recruiters would prioritize internal candidates for new roles within the company. It will also offer severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and more to those who can’t move internally.
Galetti wrote that in 2026, the company would continue to remove layers and “realize efficiency gains” while hiring in key areas.
