Just one week after a report came out that Amazon wanted to replace 75% of its workforce with robots, the online retail giant has announced that it is laying off 14,000 employees to reduce "bureaucracy" and invest in "our biggest bets" -- namely, artificial intelligence.
"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 (in existing market segments and altogether new ones)," said Beth Galetti, SVP of People Experience and Technology, in a blog post on Tuesday. "We're convinced that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business."
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Citing information from Amazon workers, Reuters said departments most affected would be devices, advertising, Prime Video, HR and Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services. Twitch has also reportedly been affected.
Amazon's major layoff today is impacting Twitch.
The exact number is not known at this time, but some affected individuals have been informed, and an internal email states that it will be "a small number." pic.twitter.com/KOsGAG3P7G
Reuters also reported that there would be more job cuts in future, bringing the total job losses to 30,000.
The layoffs are reportedly the largest in Amazon history, and come months after CEO Andy Jassy outlined his vision for how the company would rapidly ramp up its development of generative AI and AI agents. The cuts are the latest in a wave of layoffs this year as tech giants including Microsoft, Accenture, Salesforce and India's TCS have reduced their workforces by thousands in what has become a frenzied push to invest in AI.
In a report issued earlier in October, it was projected that the global AI infrastructure market -- driven mostly by the need to construct massive data centers -- would grow from $26.18 billion in 2024 to $221.40 billion by 2034, an annual growth rate of nearly 24%.
Amazon is the third-largest employer in the US, but is also pushing further into robot workers. The e-commerce giant already has more than 1 million robots operating in its delivery and fulfillment network -- two-thirds of the company's human workforce. Amazon reportedly wants to automate 75% of its operations. A CNBC report said Amazon could save $4 billion per year by 2027 if it automates as much as it plans to in its warehouses.
The key to its automation plans is quick and huge investment in AI. In his blog post on June 17, Jassy said, "Today, we have over 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but at our scale, that's a small fraction of what we will ultimately build. We're going to lean in further in the coming months."
Jassy said AI agents will be able to do countless tasks, will speed up innovation and will help Amazon stay "customer-obsessed, inventive, fast-moving, lean, scrappy."
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