Amazon cuts 14,000 corporate jobs as spending on artificial intelligence accelerates

By MICHELLE CHAPMAN Associated Press Business Writer Amazon will cut about corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while trimming spending In June CEO Andy Jassy who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in commented that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon s corporate workforce in the next limited years Jassy disclosed at the time that Amazon had more than generative AI services and applications in progress or built but that figure was a small fraction of what it plans to build Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the company s AI plans Earlier that month Amazon informed that it was planning to invest billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure Since started Amazon has committed to about billion apiece to information center projects in Mississippi Indiana Ohio and North Carolina as it ramps up its infrastructure to compete with other tech giants to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence products Amazon is competing in the AI space with giants like OpenAI Google and Microsoft In a conference call with industry analysts in May Jassy announced the likely for advancement in the company s AWS business is massive If you believe your mission is to make customers lives easier and better every day and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI you re going to invest very aggressively in AI and that s what we re doing You can see that in the -plus AI applications we re building across Amazon You can see that with our next generation of Alexa named Alexa he announced On Tuesday the online giant disclosed it was reducing bureaucracy The reductions we re sharing at present are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy removing layers and shifting guidance to ensure we re investing in our biggest bets and what matters the greater part to our customers current and future necessities Beth Galetti Senior Vice President of People Experience and Apparatus at Amazon commented in message to employees Tuesday Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday Preponderance workers will be given days to look for a new position internally Galetti declared For those who can t find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional backing including severance pay outplacement services and wellbeing insurance benefits Amazon has about corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately million The cuts revealed Tuesday amount to about a reduction in its corporate workforce Amazon s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending In the following years big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line The cuts communicated Tuesday suggests Amazon is still trying to get the size of its workforce right and it may not be over It was the biggest culling at Amazon since when the company cut jobs Those cuts came in waves with jobs trimmed in March of that year and another employees two months later Amazon has not noted if more job cuts are coming Neil Saunders managing director of GlobalData noted in a report that the layoffs represent a deep cleaning of Amazon s corporate workforce Unlike the Target layoffs Amazon is operating from a position of strength he announced The company has been producing good enhancement and it still has a lot of headroom for further expansion in both the U S and overseas But Saunders noted that Amazon is not immune to outside factors as global markets tighten and underlying costs climb It necessities to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom line performance This is especially so given the amount of resources the company is making in areas like logistics and AI In several techniques this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure he noted Amazon will post quarterly financial results on Thursday During its the greater part latest quarter the company announced development for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services