Amazon prepares to remove up to 30,000 positions in its logistics, payments, video games and cloud computing divisions, according to Reuters. These cuts, expected this week, would be the largest since those of 2022/2023, which had already affected more than 27,000 corporate employees. Behind this new restructuring, Andy Jassy assumes an industrial shift aimed at make Amazon an “AI-powered” companycompletely redesigned around intelligent agents and automation.
The former boss of AWS, who became CEO in 2021, is continuing the logic of transformation initiated after the COVID 19 pandemic. Amazon then oversized its workforce to meet exceptional demand. Three years later, management is seeking to correct this hypertrophy by reducing the human part of internal functioning. In the official communication, the restructuring is not presented as a budget cut, but as a reallocation towards artificial intelligence, data and software development professions.
In a memo addressed to employees in June 2025, Andy Jassy justified this shift by the conviction that artificial intelligence has become the new infrastructure of the company:
“Today, in virtually every corner of business, we use generative artificial intelligence to make our customers’ lives better and easier. What started as a deep belief – that every customer experience would be reinvented through AI – is becoming a reality. Technologies like generative AI are rare; they only appear once a generation and completely change what is possible for customers and businesses. That’s why we’re investing heavily, and the progress we’re making is clear. »
Behind this technological momentum, Amazon is pursuing a much more brutal social transformation. The group imposes a mandatory return to site in its strategic hubs (Seattle, Arlington and Washington DC) in order to strengthen managerial control and accelerate the transition. This geographic centralization, combined with the automation of support functions, acts as a indirect workforce reduction lever. “Voluntary” departures make it possible to reduce the payroll without causing major social conflict.
Financially, Amazon recorded total second-quarter revenue of $167.7 billionup by 13% over a year, for a net income of $18.2 billion. Operations are showing solid progress, with $19.2 billion in operating profitbut the decline in free cash flowfell to 18.2 billion against 53 billion a year earlier, illustrates the tension of a model subject to massive investments in AI and the cloud.
Andy Jassy highlights these figures to legitimize his strategy: “Our belief that AI will change every customer experience is starting to materialize,” he declared during the presentation of the results, citing the launch ofAlexa+of the robotic model DeepFleetor the development environment Kiro. But behind the innovation, Amazon enters an era of social contractionwhere automation becomes an imperative productivity tool.
Jassy’s bet is to make Amazon the first “AI-powered” multinational in historyeven if it means redefining the contract between innovation and employment.
