‘Will need more people doing …’: How Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s employee memo ‘warned’ about thousands of layoffs months in advance

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned employees in June 2025 that artificial intelligence would shrink the company’s corporate workforce, four months before the company announced 14,000 job cuts on October 28. The early signal gave staff a preview of what would become one of the company’s largest layoff rounds since the pandemic era.

In a company-wide message dated June 17, Jassy explicitly stated that AI adoption would fundamentally reshape Amazon’s staffing needs.