Amazon has begun one of its biggest reorganizations since the pandemic hiring boom. An exclusive report said the company was preparing to cut as many as 30,000 corporate roles, close to 10 percent of its white-collar staff, as leadership pushed to strip out layers and lean harder on artificial intelligence. A day later, Amazon formally announced about 14,000 corporate job cuts, with leaders signaling that additional changes are likely as 2026 approaches.
At the center of the plan is a structural shift that Amazon executives have telegraphed for months. In June, CEO Andy Jassy told employees that as the company rolls out generative AI and agents, the work itself will change and “we will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today,” adding that “in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
The first wave of cuts is broad. Roles affected span devices, advertising, Prime Video, human resources, operations, Alexa and parts of AWS. Impacted staff are receiving 90 days to look for internal roles, with severance to follow if they cannot redeploy.
The official rationale: fewer layers, more ownership, faster bets
Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president for People Experience and Technology, put it plainly in a company blog post announcing the reductions: “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.” She also framed the moment in technological terms, writing that “this generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet.”
That framing tracks with Jassy’s internal push over the past year to flatten teams and speed decisions. In a September 2024 memo, he directed each senior team to “increase the ratio of individual contributors to managers by at least 15% by the end of Q1 2025” to remove layers, strengthen ownership, and reduce bureaucracy. The same memo reaffirmed a stricter return-to-office stance designed, in Jassy’s words, to make collaborating, inventing, and teaching easier and more effective.
Even as Amazon names AI as a catalyst, the company’s public messaging tries to separate cause and effect. After reports of the layoffs, an Amazon spokesperson said, “AI is not the reason behind the vast majority of reductions,” while Galetti stressed performance is strong but the organization must be leaner to move faster. The nuance is that AI is accelerating the change, even if every individual cut is not directly replacing a person with a tool.
How the AI angle really shows up inside Amazon
The clearest line from AI to headcount is in Jassy’s June note, which anticipated net reductions as AI scales across the company’s workstreams. That includes internal agents that automate routine tasks in corporate functions, as well as code-writing tools, analytics copilots, and AI-assisted operations in retail and logistics. “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy wrote, emphasizing that some traditional roles would shrink while new AI-adjacent jobs grow.
On the retail side, Worldwide Stores CEO Doug Herrington has been explicit about AI’s role in product and cost transformation. “AI is becoming transformative for our business, and we really haven’t had a technology revolution as large as this since the start of the internet,” he said at a recent industry forum, pointing to AI shopping assistants, review summaries, and supply chain improvements that save hundreds of millions of dollars in back-end processes. Those savings and product changes feed the company’s push to reallocate resources to its biggest bets.
AWS is the other engine. Amazon has been pouring tens of billions into AI and cloud infrastructure, which the company and outside analysts say will pay off over time but pressures near-term expenses. The result is a corporate portfolio that adds data center capacity and AI platforms while seeking management efficiencies in older lines of work. That tradeoff is visible in the mix of affected orgs and in Amazon’s emphasis on re-skilling rather than backfilling many roles.
Why the number keeps moving
If the plan started with “as many as 30,000,” why announce 14,000 now? Reporting indicates Amazon is sequencing the changes. Leaders confirmed 14,000 reductions with language that the company will keep hiring in strategic areas and continue to “find additional places we can remove layers.” In short, leadership is taking a rolling approach that lets the company measure operational impact and redeploy talent before making additional calls.
The measured rollout also matches Jassy’s cultural push. He wants Amazon to operate like the world’s largest startup, which in practice means de-layering, raising the bar on ownership, and eliminating what he calls pre-meeting culture. A single hard number is less important than getting to the org shape leaders want.
What it means for employees and customers
For employees, the near-term reality is a 90-day internal search window, eligibility to interview for prioritized openings, and continued hiring in key areas, paired with a clear signal from the top to lean into AI skills. Even before this week, Jassy was urging staff to learn and use AI tools so they can do more with less and build the next wave of products.
For customers and shareholders, Amazon is attempting to balance three narratives at once. First, a focus on speed, cost, and simplicity by removing layers and concentrating bets. Second, an aggressive AI build-out across retail and AWS that is already changing how products are discovered, delivered, and supported. Third, a case that reductions are part of long-term reinvention rather than a retreat. That is why Galetti can say the company is performing well while still cutting roles, because the goal is a different shape of company suited to an AI-heavy future.
The bottom line
Amazon’s job cuts sit at the intersection of culture reform and technology transition. The company is not simply trimming to hit a number. It is restructuring to move faster, lower its management overhead, and pour more resources into AI platforms and features that leaders insist are as consequential as the early internet. As Jassy wrote, “we will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today,” even as new kinds of roles appear. The first 14,000 reductions show where this is headed. Whether the total ultimately approaches the 30,000 figure will depend on how quickly AI tools spread inside the business and how much efficiency leadership believes remains to be captured.
Disclaimer: All quotes are either sourced directly or attributed to public statements.
Related Articles
