NEW YORK — Amazon said on Wednesday it plans to eliminate about 16,000 corporate jobs, marking its second round of mass job cuts in three months, as the company fights to improve its standing in the battle for AI supremacy.In a blog post, Amazon said the layoffs were part of an ongoing effort to “strengthen our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy.” Amazon in late October announced it was cutting 14,000 corporate employees, following a directive from CEO Andy Jassy’s vision of operating like the world’s biggest startup. He wants the company to remain nimble so it can adapt and change quickly as AI upends the technology sector.Amazon is America’s second-largest private employer, behind Walmart. It has over 350,000 corporate employees, according to a 2024 survey filed to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, didn’t rule out more job cuts in the future, but said the company isn’t trying to create “a new rhythm” of broad layoffs every few months.“That’s not our plan,” Galetti wrote. “But just as we always have, every team will continue to evaluate the ownership, speed, and capacity to invent for customers, and make adjustments as appropriate.”She added, however, that Amazon will hire strategically to ramp up in parts of the business that are critical to the company’s future.Amazon is in stiff competition with Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI and a host of other technology companies that are battling to ramp up computing power and large language models that they believe will power the economy of the future. That’s an expensive endeavor, but Jassy has said these layoffs are about efficiency rather than cost savings.Layoffs will begin Wednesday across the company. Most employees will be given 90 days to look for new roles internally, while people who aren’t rehired at Amazon will be given severance pay and additional benefits, the company said.The layoffs were reportedly announced to staff Tuesday night in an internal email. That memo was apparently sent inadvertently, because it referred to the blog post that wasn’t published until Wednesday morning.Amazon separately announced Tuesday it would close its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go grocery businesses, as it doubles down on its Whole Foods branded stores. — Agencies
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