Amazon reported blockbuster third-quarter earnings that crushed Wall Street expectations, with revenue hitting $180.17bn. But the celebration was overshadowed by the company’s recent decision to lay off 14,000 corporate workers.
On an investor call, CEO Andy Jassy denied the mass layoffs were driven by AI or financial necessity. Instead, he attributed the cuts to “culture,” stating the company was trying to operate more like “the world’s largest startup.”
This statement contrasts with a company blog post that referenced advancements in AI as a factor for “staying nimble.” Jassy himself had previously suggested AI would mean “fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today.”
The cultural shakeup comes as Amazon’s cloud division, AWS, reported its strongest growth since 2022, with a 20% revenue increase to $33bn. This happened despite a recent, high-profile global outage that took critical systems offline for hours.
The company’s stock soared 9% on the financial news, which highlighted Amazon’s continued dominance in cloud computing and its efforts to expand its AI-driven services like Rufus and Zoox.