Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure was a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.
“If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day, and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing. You can see that in the 1,000-plus AI applications we’re building across Amazon. You can see that with our next generation of Alexa, named Alexa+,” he said.
Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday. Most workers will be given 90 days to look for a new position internally, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Those who can’t find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional support including severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.
Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million. The cuts announced Tuesday amount to about a 4% reduction in its corporate workforce.
Amazon’s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending. In the following years, big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line.
Yet the jobs market which has for years been a pillar in the U.S. economy, is showing signs of weakening. Layoffs have been limited, but the same can be said for hiring.
Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a statement that the layoffs “represent a deep cleaning of Amazon’s corporate workforce.”
But Saunders noted that Amazon is not immune to outside factors, as global markets tighten and underlying costs climb.
“It needs to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom-line performance. This is especially so given the amount of investment the company is making in areas like logistics and AI. In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure,” he said.
Amazon will post quarterly financial results on Thursday. During its most recent quarter, the company reported 17.5% growth for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.
