Amazon confirms 14,000 job losses in corporate division (www.bbc.com)

Amazon has confirmed it will cut roughly 14,000 corporate roles as part of a reorganization to “be organised more leanly” and redirect resources toward its AI ambitions. The company—which employs about 1.5 million people globally, including ~350,000 corporate staff—says affected employees will be offered internal placement help or transition support (severance). The announcement follows earlier reports of as many as 30,000 cuts and comes after Amazon’s Q2 results beat expectations even as management flags the need to invest in its “biggest bets” and move faster with fewer layers of decision‑making. For the AI/ML community the move is a clear signal that Amazon is prioritizing AI-driven automation and product investments, expecting routine tasks to be replaced by AI tools and shifting headcount toward roles that build and operate those systems. CEO and senior leaders have framed AI as “the most transformative technology since the Internet,” implying accelerated hiring in ML engineering, data platform, and cloud infrastructure roles even as some corporate roles shrink. The strategy also raises questions about ROI—investors are watching AWS growth versus rivals—and suggests increased competition for top AI talent as firms race to deploy models, tooling, and cloud services at scale.