Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence.

In June, CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.

Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure was a “small fraction” of what it planned to build.

Jassy encouraged employees to get on board with the company’s AI plans. A month later, Amazon announced multibillion-dollar investments to expand cloud infrastructure and advance AI innovation in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Australia.

On Tuesday, the online giant said it was reducing bureaucracy.

“The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of this work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs,” Beth Galetti, senior vice-president of people experience and technology at Amazon, said in message to workers on Tuesday (US time).

Teams and individuals affected by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday.

-AAP