Amazon is set to lay off tens of thousands of office employees in one of its largest job cuts in years, as the e-commerce and tech giant intensifies its investment in artificial intelligence. According to multiple U.S. media reports, about 30,000 corporate positions will be eliminated beginning Tuesday in a major cost-cutting move.
The layoffs, representing nearly 10 percent of Amazon’s 350,000 office staff, will not affect workers in the company’s vast distribution and warehouse network, which employs more than 1.5 million people globally. Reports by The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, citing anonymous sources, indicate that the move is part of a broader restructuring aimed at improving efficiency and funding new AI-driven initiatives.
Seattle-based Amazon has yet to issue an official comment on the planned cuts. However, news of the upcoming layoffs sent shares slightly higher by the close of trading Monday, signaling investor optimism about the company’s renewed focus on profitability.
Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy has repeatedly expressed confidence in the transformative power of artificial intelligence. During Amazon’s last quarterly earnings call, he said the company was already seeing AI reshape customer engagement and internal operations. “Our conviction that AI will change every customer experience is starting to play out,” Jassy said.
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The announcement comes as Amazon prepares to release its next earnings report on Thursday. Analysts say the company’s cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), faces mounting pressure to prove that its heavy AI investments will translate into stronger revenue and higher operating margins.
“Given its massive AI spending, AWS will be under pressure to show both revenue acceleration and improved margins,” said Sky Canaves, principal analyst at Emarketer.
The layoffs also follow a recent AWS outage that disrupted major online platforms across the globe, underlining the world’s dependence on Amazon’s digital infrastructure. The outage, caused by an issue with the Domain Name System (DNS), knocked several popular services offline, including Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Airbnb, Snapchat, and Duolingo. Even major banks such as Lloyd’s reported temporary service interruptions linked to the disruption.
Despite the incident, AWS continues to dominate the global cloud computing market ahead of Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. With businesses, governments, and consumers increasingly reliant on its technology, Amazon’s restructuring underscores a clear message: the company is betting its future on artificial intelligence, even if that means cutting tens of thousands of jobs today.
