Amazon lays off thousands of corporate workers as it spends on AI : NPR
Two Amazon employees chat at one of the entrances to the company’s East Coast headquarters in Virginia.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Amazon is laying off thousands of workers in an effort to cut costs while spending big on the AI race.
In a memo released Tuesday, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s chief human resources officer, said the tech giant would cut about 14,000 jobs, or about 4% of its workforce. She cited a goal of “cutting bureaucracy, removing layers and shifting resources to ensure we invest in our biggest bets and what matters most for our customers’ needs now and in the future.”
Amazon has faced intense pressure from investors to tighten its finances. The company had increased its workforce, including in corporate jobs, during the pandemic. And Amazon reported disappointing gains in its AI business in July; It’s a dominant cloud computing giant, but its growth in AI lags behind Microsoft and other competitors.
Amazon will deliver its latest financial report on Thursday. Last week, its AWS cloud service suffered one of the worst outages in its history, disrupting the work of many popular websites and applications, including Venmo, Reddit, Roblox and Duolingo.
In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote to employees to share his thoughts on generative AI: “We will need fewer people to do some of the work that is done today, and more people for other types of work.
Reports, citing company insiders, previously suggested the layoffs could affect up to 30,000 jobs in human resources, cloud computing and many other divisions.
The Amazon layoffs follow nearly 2,000 job cuts at Starbucks as part of the coffee chain’s turnaround plan, sparked by falling sales. Last week, Target also announced it would cut 1,800 jobs from its workforce, as it tries to right the ship with sales that have been declining or stagnant for nearly three years.
Editor’s note: Amazon is among NPR’s recent financial supporters and pays to distribute some NPR content.
