Update: Amazon has confirmed plans to cut about 14,000 people from its corporate workforce, including employees in its video games division.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people and technology at Amazon, confirmed the news in a message to employees (later posted on Amazon website).
She explained that the tech, media and retail behemoth was making cuts to operate like “the world's biggest startup” and cut bureaucracy.
“The cuts we're sharing today are a continuation of that work to emerge even stronger by further cutting bureaucracy, eliminating layers, and shifting resources to ensure we're investing in our biggest bets and in what matters most to our clients' current and future needs,” she wrote.
“We are working hard to support everyone whose role is affected, including offering most employees 90 days to find a new role internally (timeframe may vary depending on local laws), and our recruiting teams will prioritize internal candidates to help as many people as possible find new roles at Amazon.”
Galetti also championed the benefits of artificial intelligence in her message to employees and said the oft-criticized technology is already allowing companies like Amazon to “innovate much faster than ever before.” She suggested that it would be important for the company to reduce headcount in order to take advantage of the perceived opportunities provided by this technology.
“Some may ask why we are cutting roles when the company is doing well. Across all of our businesses, we deliver outstanding customer experiences, rapid innovation and strong business results every day,” she continued.
“We need to remember that the world is changing quickly. This generation of artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology we have seen since the Internet, and it allows companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and entirely new ones). We believe we need to be more organized, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our clients and business.”
It is currently unclear which video game studios (and how many gaming workers specifically) were affected, but anecdotal evidence posted online indicates that this division was targeted by Amazon.
Original story: Amazon intends to cut thousands of corporate positions in key departments such as logistics, payments, cloud computing and gaming.
This is according to both reports Bloomberg And Reuterswho claim layoffs could be announced this week and affect up to 30,000 people.
Sources familiar with the situation told Reuters that Amazon will cut a number of employees to compensate for excessive employment during the COVID-19 pandemic. The total cuts will affect about 10 percent of the company's 350,000-person corporate workforce. Amazon currently employs approximately 1.55 million employees worldwide.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who was named to the role in November 2021 and has been with the company for decades, previously told employees that generative artificial intelligence tools and agents will be used to replace humans in the coming years.
In a memo to employees published in June 2025 (Thanks again, Reuters), Jassy said the technology will change how Amazon operates, resulting in the need for “fewer people doing some of the jobs that are done today and more people doing other jobs.”
“It's hard to say where this will lead over time, but over the next few years we expect it to lead to a reduction in our overall corporate workforce as we realize efficiency gains from widespread use of AI across the company,” he added in the note.
Amazon declined to comment when contacted by Bloomberg and Reuters.
