Amazon is said to be preparing to cut roughly 16,000 corporate positions starting this week, bringing the online retailer's total workforce reduction to approximately 30,000 employees, according to sources familiar with the company's plans reported by Reuters.

The cuts, expected to begin as early as Tuesday, will affect staff across Amazon Web Services, retail operations, Prime Video and the company's human resources division, known as People Experience and Technology. The reductions follow an initial round in October that eliminated about 14,000 white-collar positions.

Chief executive Andy Jassy attributed the restructuring to cultural concerns rather than financial pressures or artificial intelligence adoption. "It's culture," Jassy told analysts during the company's third-quarter earnings call, explaining that the organisation had accumulated excessive bureaucracy and management layers.

The October redundancies were initially linked to AI advancement, with an internal letter describing the technology as "the most transformative we've seen since the Internet" and noting it enabled companies to "innovate much faster than ever before". However, Jassy later clarified that the cuts were "not really financially driven and not even really AI-driven".

The complete 30,000-position reduction represents nearly 10 per cent of Amazon's corporate workforce, though only a small fraction of its 1.58 million total employees. The majority of Amazon's staff work in fulfilment centres and warehouses.

The redundancies would mark the largest workforce reduction in Amazon's three-decade history, surpassing the approximately 27,000 positions eliminated in 2022. Workers affected by the October cuts were given 90 days' notice whilst remaining on payroll, a period that expires on Monday.

Jassy had previously indicated in 2025 that Amazon's corporate headcount would likely decline over time due to efficiency gains from AI implementation. Companies across the technology sector are increasingly deploying AI to automate software coding and routine tasks, seeking cost savings and reduced dependence on human workers.

Amazon showcased its latest AI models during its annual AWS cloud computing conference in December, demonstrating the company's continued investment in the technology despite Jassy's assertion that AI was not driving the redundancy programme.

An Amazon spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.

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