Amazon to Cut About 14,000 Corporate Jobs as AI Drives Big Shift
Amazon is moving ahead with a major workforce overhaul, announcing it will eliminate approximately 14,000 corporate positions as part of a broader push toward becoming more agile and AI-driven. The initiative reflects Amazon’s ambition to “be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership,” according to Beth Galetti, senior vice-president of People Experience & Technology. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet,” she wrote. “It’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones) ... We’re convinced that we need to be organised more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and businesses.”
Although 14,000 jobs are the confirmed target, the figure could ultimately reach as many as 30,000 as Amazon ramps up its transformation. The cuts span multiple divisions, including cloud computing, grocery, video games, human resources, advertising, sustainability, communications and devices. These are among the first to feel the impact in what is being described as the company’s largest white-collar reduction to date.
The move underscores how technology-driven businesses are recalibrating their staffing models amid the rise of artificial intelligence. Across the industry, companies from tech to finance are shifting workforce priorities — reducing roles even in AI teams, while hiring elsewhere for different tasks. For example, Meta Platforms let go of about 600 employees in its AI division recently, Microsoft has trimmed more than 15,000 jobs this year, and Google quietly slashed approximately 35 % of mid-level managerial roles. In Amazon’s view, as CEO Andy Jassy has noted, “we will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
The current cuts come after a period of rapid hiring: During the pandemic surge, Amazon added tens of thousands of roles across shopping, logistics and cloud services. But now the focus has shifted. Between 2022 and 2023 the company cut about 27,000 roles, mostly in non-corporate areas. Even so, the latest round specifically targets about 4 % of its roughly 350,000 global corporate and tech employees. Meanwhile the company’s total workforce remains above 1.54 million, mostly in warehouses and logistics.
Despite the sweeping job cuts, Amazon isn’t pulling back on investment. Far from it — the company plans to pour about US$118 billion this year into AI development and cloud infrastructure, underscoring the significance of its pivot and the stakes in the race against competitors such as Microsoft and Google. At the same time, Jassy has been redefining Amazon’s corporate culture, urging a “world’s largest start-up” mindset and reinstating a five-day office workweek to accelerate decision-making and flatten management hierarchies.
Even with corporate jobs being reduced, Amazon is still recruiting heavily for its fulfilment and transportation operations, particularly ahead of the busy festive retail season. The company expects to hire about 250,000 workers for those units. These roles, however, are largely temporary and sit far from the company’s AI-driven reorganisation at the corporate level.
As Amazon prepares to report its third-quarter earnings, investors will be watching to determine whether this bold reinvention — trading human layers for silicon brains — translates into efficiency gains and stronger growth.