Amazon will lay off around 14,000 office-based employees globally, including staff in Ireland, as it restructures operations to reduce bureaucracy and redirect investment towards artificial intelligence. The move, confirmed today, marks one of the company’s largest workforce reductions since its pandemic-era expansion.

The Irish Department of Enterprise confirmed receiving a collective redundancy notification from Amazon, indicating at least 30 job cuts locally, though reports suggest as many as 150 roles may be affected. Amazon employs approximately 6,500 people across six Irish sites, including its Dublin fulfilment centre at Baldonnel Business Park.

The layoffs primarily target white-collar and corporate roles rather than warehouse or logistics staff, who make up the bulk of Amazon’s 1.5 million-strong global workforce. 

Senior vice president Beth Galetti said the changes are designed to “reduce bureaucracy, remove layers and shift resources to our biggest bets,” including AI-driven innovation.

Chief executive Andy Jassy has described artificial intelligence as the company’s most transformative opportunity since the rise of the internet. Amazon’s AI strategy spans across customer engagement, logistics, and its key profit driver, Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, the company faces mounting pressure to justify its massive AI spending amid investor scrutiny ahead of Thursday’s quarterly earnings.

AWS, which dominates the global cloud computing market alongside Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, recently suffered a widespread outage that disrupted major online platforms and banking services. Analysts say the incident underscores both the scale of AWS’s influence and the need for reliability as Amazon deepens its AI focus.

As the company streamlines and reallocates resources, the layoffs signal a pivotal shift in Amazon’s evolution, from e-commerce dominance toward becoming a leaner, AI-powered enterprise.

Explore how Amazon’s restructuring could redefine global tech and cloud dynamics, read the full article here.