Amazon cuts 14,000 jobs as spending on Al accelerates

Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while trimming spending.

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In June CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon's corporate workforce in the next few years.

Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1,000 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 announced that it was planning to invest $10 billion toward building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion a piece to data 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 said the potential for growth in the company's AWS business is massive.