(Reuters) -Amazon (AMZN) said on Tuesday it will reduce its corporate workforce by about 14,000 roles, as the tech giant cuts down on operational layers to limit costs amid ballooning investments in artificial intelligence.
The company had about 1.56 million full-time and part-time employees at the end of last year. Amazon’s corporate workforce includes roughly 350,000 employees.
Shares in Amazon were slightly higher in premarket trading on Tuesday after the news.
Reuters first reported on Monday that Amazon is planning to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs beginning on Tuesday, as the company compensates for over-hiring during the peak demand of the pandemic.
Amazon has been restructuring its workforce across multiple divisions in recent months, with piecemeal job cuts across its books, devices and services unit, as well as its Wondery podcast division.
CEO Andy Jassy said in June growing adoption of generative AI tools would reduce total corporate workforce at the e-commerce giant in the next few years.
Corporations are increasingly using AI to write code for their software and adopting AI agents to automate routine tasks, as they look to save costs and cut reliance on people.
Amazon is set to report quarterly results on Thursday. Investors will be watching to see whether it has managed to keep delivering on the lofty expectations that have accompanied the AI boom.
(Reporting by Harshita Mary Varghese in Bengaluru; Editing by Nivedita Bhattacharjee and Devika Syamnath)
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