Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy has announced that the e-commerce giant will reduce its total corporate workforce as it adopts Generative AI and agentic AI for "efficiency gains" across the company.
In an open letter to the company's more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time employees, Jassy explained how Amazon will be rolling out Generative AI and agents, which will change the "way our work is done."
"We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company," he wrote.
This comes after Amazon in May eliminated roughly 100 jobs in its devices and services unit. Jeff Bezos-owned company has laid off about 27,000 employees since the beginning of 2022, with reports claiming it is continuing to look for places to cut.
Jassy Praises Leaner Team
"When I first started at Amazon in 1997 as an Assistant Product Manager, I worked on leaner teams that got a lot done quickly and where I could have substantial impact," the CEO said in the letter.
Adding that "Fast forward 28 years and the most transformative technology since the Internet is here. Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company."
Jassy also reinforced Amazon's commitment to operating like a lean, fast-moving startup, with AI as a key catalyst. With over 1,000 generative AI projects underway, Amazon plans to ramp up efforts—making it easier to build agents and deploying them widely across all business units.
How Amazon Plans to Roll Out Gen AI
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the company is still in the early stages of its AI journey and is gearing up to accelerate progress. He noted the transformative potential of AI agents—software systems that can understand natural language and perform complex tasks such as research, automation, translation, and anomaly detection.
These agents, he says, will become widespread across industries and everyday life, dramatically reshaping how people work and live. Jassy envisions billions of such agents emerging in the near future.
For Amazon, this "agentic" future offers a significant opportunity to innovate faster and serve customers better, he wrote. AI agents will help reduce repetitive tasks, allowing teams to focus on strategy and invention, acting as intelligent teammates that grow more capable over time.
