Amazon trims roles inside its artificial general intelligence group

Amazon is cutting some jobs in the unit building its most advanced artificial intelligence systems, CNBC reported Wednesday. For everyday investors, the move shows the tension inside Big Tech right now: companies are spending aggressively on AI while still trying to keep headcount and costs under control.

Amazon confirmed the layoffs to CNBC but did not say how many employees were affected or identify which teams inside the artificial general intelligence organization saw reductions. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, refers to AI that can match or exceed human performance across most tasks.

The group works on AI models and also includes teams focused on chip development and quantum computing, according to CNBC. Reuters first reported the job cuts.

An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that AI is moving quickly and that the company is narrowing its attention to the projects it sees as most useful for customers. “That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers’ future,” the spokesperson said.

Why the cuts stand out

The layoffs come while Amazon continues to spend heavily on AI. CNBC reported that the company has been reducing jobs for several years after expanding during the pandemic, and has cut more than 30,000 positions since last October. It has also continued smaller rounds of role eliminations in recent months.

At the same time, Amazon has laid out a much bigger spending plan tied to AI infrastructure. The company has forecast $200 billion in capital expenditures for the year, CNBC reported. Capital expenditures are long-term investments in assets such as data centers, chips and other infrastructure. That spending plan is more than 50% higher than Amazon’s 2025 level, according to CNBC.

CNBC also reported that Amazon is raising tens of billions of dollars in debt to help pay for its AI buildout. Debt financing lets a company fund investments without issuing new shares, but it also adds interest costs and future repayment obligations.

Amazon’s AI race

The AGI group is central to Amazon’s effort to compete with AI leaders including OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, CNBC reported. In 2024, the unit released Nova, a family of foundation models. Foundation models are large AI systems trained on broad data sets that can be adapted for tasks such as writing, coding or search.

Amazon expanded the group’s scope last December when it named longtime cloud executive Peter DeSantis to lead it, replacing Rohit Prasad, according to CNBC. In February, David Luan, the head of Amazon’s AGI lab, left the company after joining through Amazon’s 2024 acquihire of his startup Adept.

Amazon’s spokesperson told CNBC that the company has been working on large AI models for years and that the work “remains one of the most important things we’re working on.”

DeSantis told CNBC last month that Amazon’s models “haven’t been at the very frontier for the very largest, most demanding workloads.” He also said Amazon was working to improve them and wanted to have one of the “most capable intelligent models out there.”

Amazon is scheduled to report second-quarter results next week, giving investors a fresh look at how its AI spending, cost cuts and cloud strategy are showing up in the numbers.

This story draws on original reporting from CNBC.