The job cuts will reportedly affect employees in the United States, the United Kingdom and India. The announcement came after the company's most senior executives accidentally leaked details about the layoff plans.
We take a closer look.
Row over Amazon’s ‘Project Dawn’ email
A day before announcing job cuts, Amazon mistakenly sent an email purporting to refer to the layoff plan as "Project Dawn" to some Amazon Web Services (AWS) staff.
The email sent on Tuesday was signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, reported
The draft email was included in a calendar invitation sent by an executive assistant to several Amazon workers.
An Amazon Go store stands in a Manhattan mall on January 28, 2026 in New York City. Getty Images via AFP (File)
The title of the invitation was "Send project Dawn email," apparently referring to Amazon's code name for the job redundancies.
In Slack messages, viewed by Reuters, AWS employees who got the email said the Wednesday meeting was almost immediately cancelled.
"Changes like this are hard on everyone," Aubrey wrote in the email, as per Reuters. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success."
"This is a continuation of the work we've been doing for more than a year to strengthen the company by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy, so that we can move faster for customers," the email said.
Amazon employees had been expecting the layoffs for weeks, a former worker told
Amazon to slash 16k jobs
Amazon said on Wednesday that it was laying off 16,000 corporate employees, months after cutting 14,000 jobs in October.
With this, the e-commerce giant would have shelved 30,000 jobs in recent months.
The job cuts were required to strengthen the company by "reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy" at Amazon, Beth Galetti, senior vice president of people experience and technology at the company, said in a post.
She said the e-commerce giant was not planning to make "broad reductions every few months".
"While many teams finalized their organizational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now," she said.
Galetti also did not rule out the possibility of further reductions, saying some teams will continue to "make adjustments as appropriate."
Amazon has a workforce of 1.5 million (15 lakh) people globally, with around 350,000 in corporate roles.
In October, Amazon pared 14,000 jobs, blaming artificial intelligence and concerns over shifting corporate culture for the move.
The company has also said it overhired during the Covid-19 pandemic, when demand for online shopping surged.
Earlier on Tuesday, Amazon said it would close its nearly 70 remaining Amazon-branded grocery stores, Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go, and expand its Whole Foods Market business.
The US tech company has seen various rounds of cuts under CEO Andy Jassy, who took over the role four years ago after Jeff Bezos stepped down.
In an email Jassy sent to employees before the Thanksgiving holiday, viewed by the
He called this era at Amazon "a time to rethink everything we've ever done."
Last summer, Jassy warned that the increasing use of AI tools would mean more automation of duties, resulting in corporate job losses.
ALSO READ: Why is TCS letting go of 12,000 of its employees? Is AI the reason?
Who will be affected by Amazon layoffs?
Amazon’s latest round of layoffs will impact its India operations. Around 500 to 700 employees are likely to be fired in the South Asian country, sources told
They said the layoffs could be affecting India as the e-commerce giant did not achieve its desired market outcomes in the last two to three sales events.
According to internal Slack posts seen by Business Insider, the impacted teams include those within the company's Amazon Web Services cloud unit, such as the AI cloud service Bedrock, the cloud data warehouse service Redshift and the ProServe consulting team, as well as employees at the Alexa voice assistant, Prime Video and the last-mile Delivery Experience.
More roles affected are in Kindle and supply chain optimisation, a group within Amazon's fulfilment unit, reported Reuters.
Many of the laid-off employees who posted to an internal Amazon Slack channel seeking job leads were software engineers, as per Business Insider.
Amazon said it is offering "most" US-based employees 90 days to seek a new role internally. Those who fail to find a role or choose not to search a new position will receive support, including severance and health insurance benefits.
With inputs from agencies
