Amazon axes 14,000 desk jobs in AI-powered slimming plan

Layoffs are part of an efficiency drive, not a sign of struggle, says HR exec

Amazon is cutting 14,000 corporate jobs, blaming the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence for changing how the company operates – and how many people it needs.

In a public statement, Beth Galetti, Amazon's senior vice president of People Experience and Technology, said the global layoffs were part of a plan to make the corporation "organized more leanly" and able to move faster as AI transforms every part of its business.

"This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we've seen since the internet," she wrote, claiming that automation and faster decision-making would allow Amazon to "innovate much faster than ever before."

The cuts, announced on Tuesday, will affect staff across global corporate teams, including HR, devices, communications, and some AWS support roles, according to Reuters, which initially reported that Amazon planned to ax as many as 30,000 staffers.

Managers began notifying affected employees this week following internal briefings on how to handle the process.

Amazon said it is "working hard to support everyone whose role is impacted," offering most employees 90 days to find a new internal position and giving priority to internal candidates in recruitment.

Those unable or unwilling to stay on will receive severance pay, outplacement support, health insurance coverage, and other benefits, according to Amazon.

Amazon has over 350,000 corporate employees, according to a 2024 filing with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission [PDF], meaning the reductions represent about 5 percent of its white-collar workforce. While the company insists its businesses are performing well, the move underlines how even the most profitable tech giants are reorganizing for the AI era.

The reduction marks one of Amazon's largest culls since 2023, when it axed around 27,000 roles over the space of three months. 

In June, CEO Andy Jassy foreshadowed the move, telling employees that efficiency gains from artificial intelligence would eventually allow Amazon to operate with a smaller human workforce. Galetti's latest note puts that prediction into motion.

The announcement also comes amid extraordinary investment elsewhere. Recent figures revealed that Amazon's annual capital expenditure for datacenters has now topped $100 billion – roughly comparable to Costa Rica's entire GDP and greater than that of Luxembourg or Lithuania.

That spending spree highlights the shifting economics of Big Tech. While investments in AI infrastructure soar, headcount in corporate and administrative functions is dropping. Amazon has increasingly leaned on internal AI systems to streamline logistics, automate HR processes, and assist with code generation – technology that may now be replacing some of the humans who helped build it.

The timing isn't ideal either. The layoffs arrive just a week after a major AWS outage in the US-East-1 region that took swathes of the internet offline. While the two events aren't directly related, the juxtaposition underscores the challenge of balancing efficiency drives with operational resilience.

Amazon's keeping quiet on how much cash the cuts will save it, but the goal's plain enough: trim the fat, let the bots take over, and march toward the AI-powered future it's spending billions to build. For thousands of corporate staff, though, that leaner future will mean finding somewhere else to log in. ®