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TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Amazon announced on Tuesday, October 28, 2025, that it will lay off around 14,000 corporate employees as part of a cost-cutting measure linked to the company’s growing reliance on artificial intelligence (AI) and efforts to reduce salary expenses.Earlier this year, CEO Andy Jassy said Amazon’s investment in AI technology would enable the company to streamline operations and reduce its dependence on human labor.In a message to employees on Tuesday, Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president for Human Resources Experience and Technology, confirmed that large-scale layoffs were likely.“What we need to remember is that the world is changing quickly,” Galetti said, as quoted by CBS. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we've seen since the Internet, and it's enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones).”Amazon has made significant investments in generative AI technology. Earlier this year, Jassy revealed that the company plans to spend US$10 billion on a new AI innovation campus in North Carolina.The initiative aims to integrate AI into various Amazon services, including its voice assistant Alexa and e-commerce shopping tools.In a conference call with industry analysts in May, Jassy emphasized the immense growth potential of Amazon Web Services (AWS), its cloud computing arm.“In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure,” said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, in an email statement.With 1.5 million employees worldwide, Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the United States, behind only Walmart.“The Amazon layoffs are dramatic in scale, and they represent a deep cleaning of Amazon's corporate workforce,” Saunders added.Despite the layoffs, Amazon announced earlier this month that it plans to hire 250,000 seasonal workers for warehouse and transportation roles during the upcoming holiday season.The company’s decision has sparked intense debate on social media. Many users described it as “the end of stable employment” and compared it to the onset of a new Great Depression.“Is Amazon replacing humans with robots?” one user asked, as quoted by NDTV. Others echoed similar concerns, saying that the company is prioritizing automation and AI over people. “Humans are being replaced. Robots are taking over,” wrote another.One user summarized the public sentiment succinctly: “This isn't just about layoffs. It's the age-old struggle between labour-driven survival and capital-driven ambition. When efficiency overrides empathy, people are seen as costs, not contributors.”Editor’s Choice: Indonesia's Minister Keeps Silent on Layoff Numbers During Prabowo's First YearClick here to get the latest news updates from Tempo on Google News
