Amazon layoffs hit hundreds of employees across multiple teams

Amazon employees reported a new round of job cuts across several parts of the company on Tuesday.

A group of employees wrote in an internal Slack channel that they had received emails telling them their roles had been eliminated, according to messages viewed by Business Insider. The channel, which had nearly 37,000 members, quickly filled with questions about severance, access to internal job postings, and whether further notifications were still coming.

The messages suggest cuts across several business units, including customer service, marketplace support, and engineering roles in Amazon’s retail business, as well as in India and the UK.

Fewer than 1,000 employees were affected in total, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The new cuts show that Amazon's cost overhaul is still reshaping its corporate workforce even as the company embarks on its biggest spending binge yet. After eliminating roughly 30,000 jobs late last year and early this year to cut costs and flatten its organization, Amazon is now preparing to spend a record $220 billion on data centers, chips, and other infrastructure for AI.

An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that the company eliminated “a small number” of roles on Tuesday, primarily in its Stores business.

"We're always looking at our team structures to ensure we're best set up to move fast as we innovate for customers," the spokesperson said. "We've adjusted parts of our Stores business because we believe this structure will better enable us to deliver on our priorities. As part of these changes, we've made the difficult decision to eliminate a small number of roles, and we're committed to supporting affected employees through their transition."

The layoffs followed months of anxiety among Amazon's corporate workforce over the prospect of another broad round of cuts, according to people familiar with the matter. Employees have been bracing for layoffs after prior reductions, and some leaders have scaled back planning for the next several quarters partly because they expected their teams or priorities could change, according to one of the people.

The uncertainty left employees parsing leadership meetings, calendar invitations, and team changes for clues. In the Slack channel, workers asked whether all notices had been sent, how medical leave would be handled, and whether they would retain access to Slack and Outlook during their notice periods. Others wondered whether cuts would reach Mexico and elsewhere in Europe.

For many employees, the immediate question was whether they could find another job inside Amazon before their employment ended. One post asked whether workers who received an outside offer during the 90-day notification period would have to forfeit severance if they left early.

Amazon is not alone in pairing job cuts with a bigger AI push. Meta eliminated roughly 8,000 roles in May while shifting thousands of other workers into AI initiatives, and Microsoft cut more than 5,000 jobs across July and September.

Amazon, meanwhile, has also been reaching out to former employees, including some laid off in earlier rounds, about open roles in AWS and its AI businesses.

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