Amazon is bracing for major job cuts among its corporate employees starting on Tuesday, as it spends aggressively on artificial intelligence development, according to two people familiar with the cuts.
Another round of corporate cuts is expected in January, after the holiday shopping season, the people said.
One of the people said the company was looking to cut billions of dollars in its operating expenses, and gave the leaders of the groups facing cuts, including human resources, targets to trim 10 to 15 percent of their costs related to head count. More senior roles, like directors, are expected to be harder hit than in earlier rounds of layoffs, the people said.
Reuters, which reported the layoffs earlier on Monday, said the cuts could total about 30,000 jobs, or almost 10 percent of the company’s corporate ranks.
Amazon declined to comment.
The company had $18 billion in profit in the latest quarter, and has increased spending on data centers that develop leading artificial intelligence systems. Capital expenses, which include data centers, are expected to top $120 billion this year, up almost 50 percent from last year.
In June, Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, told employees that efficiency gains from using A.I. will shrink the company’s corporate work force over the next few years. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today,” he wrote. While that might create new opportunities, he predicted that the overall corporate work force would be smaller as a result.
Amazon has also looked to rein in the growth of its warehouse and other blue-collar workers, who make up most of its more than 1.5 million employees. The New York Times reported last week that the company had plans to use automation to avoid hiring more than 600,000 warehouse employees in a decade even as it expects to sell twice as many items over that period.
Amazon last saw widespread layoffs almost three years ago, in a series of cuts over several months that trimmed 27,000 positions. The company’s work force had ballooned during the early pandemic, topping 1.6 million. Though the business has since grown substantially, it had 1.5 million workers as of the end of June.
Amazon’s competitors have been turning to layoffs as well. Microsoft cut about 15,000 roles in the early summer. Target last week said it would trim roughly 1,800 corporate jobs, and Meta laid off 600 people.
Karen Weise writes about technology for The Times and is based in Seattle. Her coverage focuses on Amazon and Microsoft, two of the most powerful companies in America.
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