Amazon is laying off roughly 14,000 people across the company as it grapples with “this generation of AI,” it told employees on Tuesday.
In a note to staffers, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology, said the company’s business results were strong and it would continue hiring in areas where Amazon plans to expand. But despite such strong performance, she said the company needed to move faster to keep up with AI.
“What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly,” she wrote. “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 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.”
The impending cuts are notably less than an initially reported figure of 30,000, but more could still follow into 2026. It is unclear which divisions of the wide-reaching Amazon will be impacted, though Galetti said the roles would be spread throughout its workforce. Amazon currently has about 1.55 million employees.
Many staffers will be given 90 days to find a new role within Amazon, while others will be given a severance and benefits package, Galetti further noted.
“The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs,” she wrote.
Such layoffs were hinted at in a June memo by CEO Andy Jassy, one of several tech CEOs who’ve predicted AI will constrict the current job market as roles are repurposed to accommodate its use.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy wrote 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. 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.”
Again, the layoffs may not be over yet. The company has plans to replace more than half a million jobs with robots in the coming years, believing it can leverage new technology to avoid filling hundreds of thousands of roles, according to the New York Times.
Tuesday’s layoffs follow other cuts at corporate behemoths, driven by both economic headwinds and AI adoption. Target said on Thursday it planned to cut 1,800 jobs, 1,000 of which are pure layoffs, while Microsoft, Meta and Google have all shed between hundreds and thousands of employees this year. Paramount Skydance is also expected to initiate its first round of cuts —roughly 1,000 jobs — on Wednesday.
