Amazon’s CEO Tells Staff AI Could Lead to a Smaller Corporate Workforce

Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy said he expects Amazon to trim its corporate workforce over the next few years with the spread of artificial intelligence. 

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said in a memo to employees—it was later published online—Tuesday. “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.”

Jassy suggested AI agents could help accelerate innovation at Amazon by taking on rote work previously handled by human employees.

The memo didn’t discuss in further detail the number of jobs that might be affected. Amazon had nearly 1.6 million full- and part-time employees as of March 31, according to its latest quarterly results.

Like many of its big tech peers, Amazon is allocating significant resources toward expanding its AI capacity. In February, Jassy said Amazon expects to spend more than $100 billion in capital expenditures this year, the “vast majority” of which would go to AI infrastructure for Amazon Web Services. 

Jassy in September told workers the company would be returning to five days a week of in-office work. Some big tech companies have lately sought to reduce their headcounts.

Shares of Amazon fell less than 1% to close at $214.82 Tuesday, leaving the stock down about 2% for 2025.