Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Confirms AI Will Shrink The E-commerce Workforce, Following $100bn Investment in Expansion
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has confirmed what many white passes have been feared for years: artificial intelligence is not only there to stay, it will move the jobs.
In a memo sent to employees on Tuesday, Jassy said that the company expects its corporate staff when it was gaining efficiency thanks to the adoption of AI, in particular generative AI systems and smart agents.
“We will need fewer people who make some of the jobs that are underway today, and more people make other types of jobs,” said Jassy.
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The announcement was part of an internal communication broader to update employees on Amazon rapidly expanding AI capabilities. Jassy said that generating AI is already integrated into almost all corporate corners – logistics and stock management in customer service and product development – and that it will “change the way we all work and live”.
Amazon, the second world employer with more than 1.5 million people worldwide, bets large on AI. In 2025, the company plans to spend $ 100 billion on capital expenditure, most of which will be channeled to extend its AI services and build new data centers to support the infrastructure, compared to $ 83 billion last year. Internally, more than 1,000 AI applications and services are active or under development.
Jassy stressed that the most transformative phase is still to come.
“Many of them [AI] The agents have not yet been built, “he said.” They arrive and quickly. They will change the scope and speed at which we can innovate for customers. »»
Industry signals a broader change
In American companies, managers emit similar messages, linking AI progress both to the efficiency and reductions in the workforce. This week, the British telecommunications giant BT said that its plans to reduce 40,000 jobs by 2030 “did not reflect the full potential of the AI”, suggesting that new reductions could be in advance.
The Swedish Payment Company Klarna said that its AI assistant was now doing the work of 700 full -time customer service employees. While the CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski later admitted that the company may have gone too far in the reduction of human roles, he still thinks that AI represents a serious threat to the employment of white collars.
The linguistic application Duolingo has also adopted AI to replace contract workers. The CEO, Luis Von Ahn, told staff that the company “would gradually cease entrepreneurs to work that AI can manage” and that new employees would only be approved if automation was not possible.
In Shopify, CEO Tobi Lütke clearly indicated that AI takes place before hiring. He told managers that they should prove why AI cannot achieve their goals before requesting new employees. The Crowdstrike cybersecurity company also cited AI as a reason for a 5% reduction in the workforce this year, highlighting the growing dependence of companies with regard to automation through back and front office operations.
Even these AI construction tools express their concern. Dario Amodei, CEO of the head company of IA Anthropic, recently warned that up to half of all the input white collar jobs could disappear within five years due to the automation of the AI.
“We, as producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest on what will happen,” Amodei in Axios in May. “I don’t think it’s on people’s radar.”
From efficiency to disruption
Although Jassy’s memo has underlined long -term innovation and benefits, the tone reflects an increasing awareness that the job losses of AI are no longer speculative. While these technologies pass support tools to basic operating systems, they fundamentally modify the operation of companies and how jobs are distributed.
Bloomberg Intelligence estimates that up to 200,000 banking jobs alone could be automated. AI is already used to write code, manage stocks and provide real -time customer service. With the technology that progresses quickly, roles once thought of marketing and legal work at HR – are increasingly within the reach of AI.
In the case of Amazon, the strategy is not only to replace the work but to reshape the business around new capacities. Amazon hopes to stay ahead of competitors while cutting cost centers that no longer need as many human hands, by aggressively integrating the AI into each layer of the company.
While generative AI evolves predictive text tools in autonomous agents capable of making decisions, strategic planning and operational execution, companies like Amazon do not only reduce staff – they redefine what work means in an economy focused on technology. Jassy’s message is that the biggest changes are just beginning.
