Amazon plans to lay off 14,000 employees due to crisis pursuit of cost reduction using artificial intelligence (AI).
On October 28, 2025, Amazon's senior vice president of people, experience and technology, Beth Galetti, confirmed to employees that the e-commerce giant plans to cut 14,000 positions among its corporate employees, which she said was caused by and was made possible by the company's investments in artificial intelligence.
“The cuts we're sharing today are a continuation of that work to emerge even stronger by further cutting bureaucracy, removing layers and shifting resources to ensure we're investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our clients' current and future needs,” she said in a message sent to employees.
While Galetti signaled further headcount cuts as the company looks for further ways to “realize efficiencies,” she also said Amazon expects to “continue hiring in key strategic areas” through 2026.
While she did not specify which positions were being eliminated, from which business units or where they would be located in the world, she said most employees being let go will be offered a 90-day window to find new positions within the company.
Galetti directly cited artificial intelligence as a key factor contributing to layoffs. “Some may ask why we are cutting roles when the company is doing well… We need to remember that the world is changing quickly,” she said.
“This generation of artificial intelligence is the most transformative technology we've 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 organized leaner, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business.”
Galetti also referred to two previous messages to Amazon employees from Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. In the first, in September 2024, Jassy outlined the company's ambitions to “operate like the world's largest startup”, and in the second, in June 2025, he promoted the “once in a lifetime” potential of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies to achieve this goal.
Emphasizing that “AI will be a significant catalyst” for changing the future composition of Amazon's workforce, Jassy said in June 2025 that over the next several years, “we expect this to reduce our overall enterprise workforce as we realize efficiency gains from widespread use of AI across the company.”
He concluded by encouraging employees to “be curious” and “educate themselves” about the technology's potential: “Those who embrace these changes, become familiar with AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver services to clients will be well positioned to make a big impact and help us reinvent the company.”
Amazon's last major round of job cuts occurred in early 2023.. While the company initially sought to cut 18,000 jobs in January that year, citing over-hiring during the Covid-19 pandemic, a further 9,000 cuts were announced in March, bringing the total to 27,000. further round of job losseswhich affected several hundred technicians and sales staff at Amazon Web Services (AWS) occurred in April 2024.
From January to August 2024, thousands of jobs were cut in the technology sector.Many tech companies are clearly linking layoffs to the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning in their businesses.
This included Ciscowhich cut 7% of its workforce and invested $1 billion in artificial intelligence startups; Dellwhich cut its sales force to reallocate resources among its artificial intelligence teams; Metawhich, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, laid off staff “so we can invest in these long-term, ambitious AI ideas”; And Intuitionwhich cut 1,800 employees to free up more resources to integrate artificial intelligence into its software offerings.
In November 2023 The Institute of Autonomy think tank claims that that while automating jobs through large language models (LLMs) can lead to significant reductions in work hours without loss of wages or productivity, realizing the productivity benefits of artificial intelligence in this way will require concerted policy action.
In an article published November 20, 2023Autonomy predicts that productivity gains from artificial intelligence could enable 8.8 million UK workers to move to a four-day working week by 2033, while just under 28 million people could reduce their working hours by 10% over the same time if LLMs are deployed correctly.
“Our research offers a fresh perspective on the debate about how AI can be used for good,” Autonomy research director Will Strong said at the time. “A shorter work week is the most realistic way to ensure AI benefits workers and companies. If AI is implemented equitably across the economy, it should usher in a new era of a four-day work week for everyone.”
The autonomy noted that although people have long forecasting and anticipation much shorter workweeks due to technological advances, historical productivity gains over recent decades have not translated into increased wealth or leisure time for most people, largely due to economic inequality.
It says there is often a sense of pessimism about productivity gains from artificial intelligence, with most conversations highlighting the potential for job losses and worsening working conditions, but such advances could also be used to shorten the working week for many while maintaining their wages and productivity.
However, Autonomy has made clear that productivity gains are not always equally shared between employers and workers and depend on “geographical, demographic, economic cycles and other internal labor market factors” such as workers’ access to collective bargaining.
“This is a document that defines opportunity, not destiny. The actual diffusion and implementation of technologies always occurs unevenly, which is determined by many factors: wage levels, government policy, the level of monopolization of the sector, the density of trade unions, and so on,” the document says.
