said on Tuesday that it would reduce its corporate workforce by roughly 14,000 people, as part of wider restructuring driven in part by .
The company said in a note to employees that was also posted on its website that the cuts would help with “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.”
Restructuring after the COVID delivery boom
Amazon is in the process of adapting to demand that’s slightly lower than at is peak during the lockdowns of the COVID pandemic, when it hired additional staff to cope with the spike.
Over the past two years, the giant has been gradually cutting jobs across divisions including books, devices and its podcast business Wondery.
Beth Galetti, senior vice president of People Experience and Technology, wrote in the note that that company would continue “reducing in some areas and hiring in others” heading into 2026.
Employees were told that most affected workers would be given 90 days to seek new roles internally; recruiting teams would prioritize such candidates, the company said.
AI investment push as CEO anticipates sea change
that the adoption of generative AI would reduce the total corporate workforce at the company in the coming years.
The is focusing much of its capital investment on building AI and cloud infrastructure, including building a $10-billion (roughly €8.6-billion) campus in North Carolina, one of four such data center projects in the US.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” Galetti said.
The company is also vested in AI’s growth, as it plows resources into generating its own AWS business that seeks to compete with other major players like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. An AWS outage last week showed how far the tool has spread, with disruption everywhere from Duolingo and Snapchat to popular online games like Fortnite and Gran Turismo 7.
Amazon has roughly 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximated 1.56 million. Tuesday’s cuts represent roughly 4% of its corporate workforce.
It was the largest reduction since 2023, when the company announced 27,000 job cuts in two waves.
The company will post quarterly results on Thursday, with the last set of figures showing 17.5% growth for its AWS cloud computing arm.
Edited by: Kieran Burke
The post Amazon to cut 14,000 corporate jobs amid AI investment appeared first on Deutsche Welle.
