American giant Amazon could be planning for another major round of layoffs. The company is reportedly planning to cut as many as 14,000 jobs across divisions, and possibly shutting down select teams.
Update: Amazon has denied rumours regarding a fresh layoff round. An Amazon spokesperson told India Today Tech over email, “These reports are false and not based in fact.”
As per a report from Asia Business Outlook, Amazon is likely planning to fire 14,000 workers globally by May 2026. This is expected to impact corporate roles, including mid-level managers and white-collar employees across divisions such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), retail, and human resources.
If accurate, this would be the third layoff round from Amazon in less than a year. The company fired 16,000 workers in January this year, and had reduced 14,000 roles in late 2025.
Amazon is far from the only company that has reduced its workforce recently. Just days ago, Oracle laid off around 30,000 workers globally by dropping them a 6 am email. Out of the 30,000 impacted, 12,000 of those employees are said to be from India.
Other companies who have laid off thousands of workers include Microsoft, TCS, and Accenture. Meta is also reportedly planning to cut its workforce by as many as 15,000 employees.
Is Amazon firing more workers?
Anonymous professional community platform Blind recently shared a post on X hinting at a massive layoff round at Amazon. A user who claims to work at Amazon wrote on Blind, “Heard rumors about layoffs happening in May.. Heard that it’s gonna bring a lot of restructuring and may cut more than 10k people.”
This has seemingly raised concerns amongst employees within Amazon. The user added, “I’m already so stressed and anxious about this job and don’t know what to do with this news.. Should I look for another job?”
The report claims that some employees have been unhappy with “unclear performance criteria” being used to determine the layoffs, adding to the anxiety amongst the workforce.
Some China teams may shutdown
The report states that as part of this layoff, select teams in China may be shut down completely. It is believed that the layoffs are part of Amazon’s broader strategy shift towards investing more in AI and creating a more streamlined structure.
Amazon, who is an investor in AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, is planning to spend over $125 billion in data centres.Previously Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has stated that generative AI and AI agents could reduce the need for certain roles in the company.