Two Amazon employees talk outside one of the entrances to the company's East Coast headquarters in Virginia.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
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Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images
Amazon is laying off thousands of corporate workers as it tries to cut costs while the company spends heavily on the AI ​​race.
In a note Tuesday, Amazon chief human resources officer Beth Galetti said the tech giant would cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, or about 4% of its workforce. She called the goal “reducing bureaucracy, eliminating layers and reallocating resources to ensure we are investing in our biggest bets and in what matters most to our clients' current and future needs.”
Amazon has faced intense pressure from investors to tighten its finances. During the pandemic, the company has increased its workforce, including in corporate positions. And Amazon reported disappointing performance in its artificial intelligence business in July; it is the dominant cloud computing giant, but its growth in artificial intelligence lags behind Microsoft and other competitors.
Amazon will report its latest financial report on Thursday. Last week, the AWS cloud service suffered. one of the worst power outages in its historydisrupting multiple popular websites and apps, including Venmo, Reddit, Roblox, and Duolingo.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in June wrote to employees On his thoughts on generative artificial intelligence, he said: “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are done today and more people doing other jobs. It's hard to say exactly where this will lead over time, but over the next few years we expect it to reduce our overall corporate workforce as we realize efficiency gains from the widespread use of AI across the company.”
News reports citing company insiders previously suggested that layoffs could affect up to 30,000 corporate jobs in human resources, cloud computing and many other divisions.
The corporate layoffs at Amazon follow nearly 2,000 corporate layoffs. Starbucks job cuts as part of the coffee chain's turnaround plan caused by declining sales. Last week, Target also said it would cut 1,800 jobs across the company as it tries to turn around nearly three years of declining or stagnant sales.
Editor's note: Amazon is among NPR's recent financial backers and pays to distribute some NPR content.
