The American technology corporation Amazon has announced plans to cut 14,000 employees, or about 4% of the company’s total workforce. The reason for this was the decision to increase investments in the development of artificial intelligence infrastructure. This was stated in a statement published on the company’s official website.
It is noted that the demand for delivery is currently lower than during the Covid-19 pandemic, so Amazon is forced to optimize the staff by reducing some of the employees who were hired during the period of high workload.
In total, the company employs about 1.56 million people, of which about 350 thousand are corporate personnel. The reduction will affect about 4% of office workers. This will be the largest layoff since 2023, when Amazon laid off 27,000 people.
Senior vice president of employee experience and technology Beth Galetti said the company will continue the optimization process in some departments until 2026, while leaving the opportunity for internal employment. According to her, laid-off employees will have 90 days to find a new position within Amazon, and human resources will consider their candidacies in priority order.
The company is directing its investments in the development of artificial intelligence and cloud technologies infrastructure. Among the key projects is the construction of a $ 10 billion campus in North Carolina, which will become one of the four largest data centers in the United States.
Amazon’s main resources are currently focused on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division, which provides competition to such technology giants as Google, Microsoft and OpenAI. The global market’s dependence on AWS was particularly evident during the recent outage, which caused problems in the operation of many services — from educational platforms like Duolingo to gaming and entertainment platforms like Fortnite and Snapchat.
