Amazon announces the cuts of 14,000 white-collar jobs with the aim of making its structure leaner and “less bureaucratic”. But also to free up resources and continue to invest aggressively in artificial intelligence, a sector that is experiencing an endless boom as demonstrated by the reorganization of OpenAI and the run of Nvidia.
The cuts announced by the retail giant are part, according to rumors, of a much broader plan which involves the overall reduction of 30,000 jobs, the largest in the history of the company for white collar workers.
The next reductions should arrive in January. The cuts will allow Amazon “to further strengthen itself by reducing bureaucracy and reallocating resources to ensure investments” in the “most important” areas, said Beth Galetti, Amazon’s head of human resources.
«Many may wonder why we cut while our performance is good. The world is changing rapidly” and AI represents “the most revolutionary technology we have seen since the internet”, explained Galetti. In recent months, CEO Andy Jassy had warned that AI would reduce the company’s workforce. A warning also shared by many other leaders of large American companies such as Microsoft, Salesforce and UPS.
The latter has announced that it has reduced 48,000 jobs since the beginning of the year. Goldman Sachs, according to some rumors, has instead told its employees to expect cuts despite the jump in profits following the need to reduce costs and the integration of AI into its activities.
Artificial intelligence thus appears to be the main cause of Corporate America’s squeeze: on the one hand it increases the efficiency of companies and therefore makes some of the staff ‘superfluous’, on the other it requires huge investments to achieve that general AI to which the giants aspire.
The transformation of OpenAI into a for-profit company aims precisely to facilitate the raising of the funds necessary to continue investing in model development. After months of negotiations and tensions, Sam Altman’s startup managed to complete its reorganization, with the birth of OpenAI Group Pbc (public benefit company), with Microsoft at 27% and the non-profit foundation that has controlled it since its foundation in 2015 at 26%.
Redmond’s share is worth 135 billion dollars and is appreciated by investors, who push the stocks higher and the market capitalization above 4,000 billion dollars (a threshold also exceeded for the first time by Apple). Nvidia is also running on Wall Street, reaching a value of 4,750 billion.
The AI chip giant has announced a $1 billion equity investment in Nokia and is preparing to unveil important contracts with Samsung and Hyundai, confirming its desire to look to Asia beyond China, in which it has remained a “victim” of the technological clash between Washington and Beijing.