Amazon plans to eliminate approximately 14,000 corporate positions in the coming months, as CEO Andy Jassy turns to AI to streamline the company’s workforce and reduce expenses. Jassy worked the company’s employees that AI-driven job reductions would be coming soon.
Bloomberg reports that in a major restructuring move, Amazon.com has announced plans to cut roughly 14,000 corporate jobs across various departments, including logistics, payments, video games, and cloud computing. Initial reports put the job cuts at 30,000, which may include future waves of layoffs beyond the initial job cuts. The decision comes just months after CEO Andy Jassy warned that the increasing use of artificial intelligence would likely lead to a reduction in the company’s workforce.
This marks the second significant round of layoffs for Amazon in the last several years. In late 2022 and early 2023, the company cut more than 18,000 corporate employees as part of Jassy’s efforts to reduce costs following the pandemic-driven boom. Since then, there have been smaller, more targeted layoffs affecting individual teams within the company.
While Amazon employs a total of approximately 1.55 million people as of June 30, the majority of them work in warehouses. The corporate workforce, which will be affected by the 14,000 job cuts, comprises about 350,000 personnel, representing a four percent reduction in that segment.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at Amazon, stated in a blog post that the reductions are part of the company’s ongoing efforts to become stronger by reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and reallocating resources to focus on its biggest bets. She also noted that Amazon will continue to hire in some parts of the business, and the 14,000 figure represents an overall workforce reduction.
Breitbart News reported in June that Jassy warned of AI-driven job cuts to come:
Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the United States, is bracing for a significant shift in its workforce as AI technology advances. In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, CEO Andy Jassy warned that the company expects AI to reduce its total corporate workforce in the next few years, as the technology brings efficiency gains across various departments.
Jassy’s memo, which was also made public, highlighted the potential impact of AI on both corporate workers, such as software developers, and employees in Amazon warehouses. He stated that AI would “improve inventory placement, demand forecasting, and the efficiency of our robots” in the company’s fulfillment centers.
Other tech giants are also cutting workers in favor of AI. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently revealed that the company is saving about $100 million a year by using AI to handle customer support, resulting in a reduction of thousands of people in their customer support workforce. Similarly, Microsoft Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff informed employees that AI tools have boosted productivity in various areas, saving the company more than $500 million last year in its call centers alone.
Before becoming CEO of the entire company, Jassy headed up Amazon Web Services (AWS), which crashed a considerable portion of the internet last week.
Read more at Bloomberg here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
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