Amazon is preparing a second wave of corporate layoffs, deepening a restructuring driven by culture shifts, management layers, and the growing role of artificial intelligence.
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| The layoffs suggest Amazon is flattening management and preparing for an AI-driven future, even as executives play down cost pressures. Image: CH |
SEATTLE, United States — January 23, 2026:
Amazon’s plan to launch a second round of corporate job cuts next week signals more than another painful moment for white-collar employees—it points to a deeper rethinking of how one of the world’s most influential companies is organized.
According to people familiar with the matter, Amazon is preparing to cut roughly another 14,000 corporate roles, bringing the total reduction to about 30,000 positions. The company eliminated about 14,000 jobs in October, and the upcoming round is expected to be similar in scale. While Amazon declined to comment, the timing suggests a deliberate, phased restructuring rather than an abrupt reaction to market stress.
In absolute terms, the cuts affect a relatively small share of Amazon’s vast workforce of 1.58 million employees worldwide, most of whom work in warehouses and fulfillment centers. But within the corporate ranks, the impact is far more pronounced. Nearly 10% of white-collar roles could disappear, making this the largest round of layoffs in Amazon’s history, surpassing the roughly 27,000 jobs cut in 2022.
The breadth of teams affected—spanning Amazon Web Services, retail operations, Prime Video, and the People Experience and Technology unit—underscores that the effort is not targeted at a single underperforming business. Instead, it reflects a company-wide attempt to slim down layers of management and reduce internal complexity.
How Amazon explains the cuts has evolved, revealing the tensions behind the move. Initially, the company linked October’s layoffs to rapid advances in artificial intelligence, calling the current wave of AI the most transformative technology since the internet. That framing aligned Amazon with a broader tech industry narrative in which automation is reshaping white-collar work.
Chief Executive Andy Jassy later offered a different emphasis, telling analysts the layoffs were “not really financially driven” and “not even really AI-driven.” Instead, he pointed to cultural issues, arguing that Amazon had accumulated too many managers and too much bureaucracy, slowing decision-making and execution.
Taken together, those explanations suggest AI is less the immediate cause than the strategic backdrop. While Jassy has downplayed AI as the direct trigger for the job cuts, he has also said Amazon’s corporate workforce will shrink over time as AI-driven efficiencies expand. The company is already using AI to write software code and automate routine tasks, and it showcased new AI models at its AWS conference in December—clear signals that technology will increasingly substitute for certain human roles.
The sequencing of the layoffs reinforces the sense of a carefully managed transition. Employees affected in October were given a 90-day paid transition period to seek internal transfers or outside opportunities, a window that expires just before the next round is expected to begin. That approach reduces overlap between severance periods while accelerating the overall restructuring.
For Amazon, the stakes are high. Cutting too deeply or too broadly risks weakening innovation in businesses like AWS and Prime Video, where competition is intense and talent is critical. For employees, the message is sobering: even at one of the world’s most powerful technology companies, corporate roles are becoming leaner, less layered, and more vulnerable to automation.
Ultimately, Amazon’s latest layoffs appear to be less about surviving a downturn and more about redefining what a modern, AI-enabled corporation looks like. Whether this reset restores the company’s famed efficiency without eroding its creative and technical edge will become clearer as the second phase of cuts unfolds.