More massive layoffs could be in store for Amazon workers - as the company pledges billions to AI (www.techradar.com)

Amazon is preparing another round of job cuts — reportedly up to 15% of its HR organization, with the People eXperience Technology team singled out — adding to roughly 27,000 layoffs since 2022. The move accompanies an aggressive pivot to AI, with the company committing up to $10 billion to AI and data-center investments as part of a broader ~$100 billion infrastructure push that helped Amazon Web Services command about 32% of global cloud share in Q1 2025. CEO Andy Jassy has signaled the shift explicitly: Amazon expects workforce reductions as it “gets efficiency gains from using AI,” and is encouraging employees to become conversant in AI to remain impactful. For the AI/ML community this is a clear reallocation of capital from labor to compute and models. Expect growing demand for MLOps, data engineering, inference and distributed-training capacity, and production-grade tooling to automate formerly human-centric workflows (including HR systems). The trend also raises governance and reliability challenges as organizations scale automation: model monitoring, data pipelines, privacy, and human-in-the-loop safeguards will become higher priorities. Amazon’s move mirrors broader industry patterns (e.g., Intel, Microsoft cuts) and signals tighter competition for cloud and infrastructure talent as companies prioritize building and operating large-scale AI systems.