‘We will need fewer people’: Amazon CEO Andy Jassy signals major job reductions as AI takes centre stage in company strategy

E-commerce giant Amazon is doubling down majorly on artificial intelligence, and this renewed focus on AI will fundamentally reshape the company and jobs, potentially even trimming the corporate workforce in the coming years, CEO Andy Jassy revealed in a letter to the employees.

In the message, which was sent to the staff on June 17, Jassy said that Amazon is inculcating AI ‘in virtually every corner of the company,’ from its Alexa voice assistant to shopping features, advertising, and internal operations. “Technologies like generative AI are rare; they come about once-in-a-lifetime, and completely change what’s possible for customers and businesses,” Jassy wrote.

“Technologies like Generative AI are rare; they come about once-in-a-lifetime, and completely change what’s possible for customers and businesses. So, we are investing quite expansively, and, the progress we are making is evident,” he added.

The CEO highlighted new AI-powered tools such as an upgraded Alexa, a shopping assistant used by tens of millions globally, and features like “Lens” and “Buy for Me” that streamline the shopping experience. Amazon’s AI is also helping independent sellers and advertisers, while AWS is rolling out advanced AI infrastructure and services for developers and enterprises.

“You can see it in what we're rolling out in Alexa+, our next generation Alexa personal assistant that's meaningfully smarter, more capable, and is the first personal assistant that can take significant actions for customers on top of providing intelligent answers to virtually any question,” he said.

But Jassy emphasized that the AI transformation will have a profound impact on Amazon’s workforce. “As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he said.

While the long-term impact on headcount is uncertain, Jassy expects “efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company” will reduce the total corporate workforce over the next few years. And talking about the incorporation of agentic AI into Amazon, Jassy pointed out that jobs will be affected because these ‘agents’ will make work more seamless.

“What makes this agentic future so compelling for Amazon, is that these agents are going to change the scope and speed at which we can innovate for customers. Agents will allow us to start almost everything from a more advanced starting point. We’ll be able to focus less on rote work and more on thinking strategically about how to improve customer experiences and invent new ones. Agents will be teammates that we can call on at various stages of our work, and that will get wiser and more helpful with more experience. If we build and leverage the right agents, it’s going to rapidly accelerate our ability to make customers lives easier and better every day, and it’s going to make our jobs even more exciting and fun than they are today,” he said.

Jassy urged employees to embrace the shift, encouraging them to learn about AI, attend trainings, and brainstorm new ways to use the technology to serve customers. “Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company,” he said.

The comments come as Amazon races to keep pace with rivals like Microsoft and Google in the AI arms race, with more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications already in progress or built. Jassy said the company will continue to “lean in further” in the coming months, making it easier to build AI agents and rolling out new applications across all business units.

For Amazon’s 1.5 million employees, the message is clear: the AI revolution is here, and it’s changing not only what the company delivers to customers, but also the very nature of work inside one of the world’s largest technology companies.