Amazon is betting that its large language model is large enough to do the jobs of 14,000 humans. The company announced in a memo today that it would be cutting 14,000 corporate jobs as part of its larger aim of “reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources.” The company made almost $18 billion in profit in the latest quarter (per The New York Times), but it’s still axing thousands of human staffers who helped reach that figure. “Some may ask why we’re reducing roles when the company is performing well,” the note, written by Amazon SVP of people Beth Galetti, continued. “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… We’re convicted [sic] 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.”
Some of Amazon’s previous job cuts in favor of AI have already gained negative attention. CNN reports that the company has over 350,000 corporate employees, meaning these cuts represent around 4% of this workforce segment. The memo did note that most employees will be given 90 days to look for new jobs internally. Even if they find one, they may be hit by yet another round of cuts coming down the line. “Looking ahead to 2026… [we expect to find] additional places we can remove layers, increase ownership, and realize efficiency gains,” Galetti wrote. Reuters predicts cuts could climb to the 30,000 range by the time the company is done. That would be in line with the company’s last major round of layoffs, in which it cut 27,000 staffers in 2023.
This is all part of CEO Andy Jassy’s plan to make Amazon “operate like the world’s largest startup,” Galetti also explained. Part of that work, in his view, involves keeping the company nimble to adapt to AI advancements, while also investing billions of dollars into data centers and AI research to advance it from within. “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy wrote in a separate memo in June. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
“AI agents will change how we all work and live,” he continued, in a particularly sweeping sentiment. “There will be billions of these agents, across every company and in every imaginable field. There will also be agents that routinely do things for you outside of work, from shopping to travel to daily chores and tasks. Many of these agents have yet to be built, but make no mistake, they’re coming, and coming fast.” If only one of those agents could figure out how to stop all these tech companies from messing with peoples’ livelihoods.
