Amazon lays off some employees in its AGI unit
Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.com Inc., speaks at a launch event in New York, USA, on Wednesday, February 26, 2025. Amazon is in the process of building more than 100 productive artificial intelligence (AI) features, Jassy said.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon The company confirmed Wednesday that it is continuing to make layoffs as it pours money into artificial intelligence, laying off some employees at its unit focused on artificial general intelligence.
The company declined to disclose how many employees were affected or which parts of the AGI organization suffered cuts. The AGI unit focuses on building artificial intelligence models and also includes groups working on silicon development and quantum computing initiatives.
“This is a fast-moving space, and we’re sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most to customers so we can move faster on the issues that matter,” an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC. “This focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles in parts of our AGI organization, as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers’ future.”
Reuters He was the first to announce the layoffs.
Amazon has been downsizing for the past few years after the pandemic hiring spree and has been allocating large sums of money to building artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company has laid off more than 30,000 employees since last October and has continued to eliminate positions in smaller rounds in recent months.
The AGI unit is a core part of Amazon’s AI strategy as the company tries to keep pace with OpenAI, Anthropic and Anthropic leaders. Google. AGI generally refers to artificial intelligence that can perform as well as or better than humans on most tasks.
In 2024, Amazon’s AGI group released a series of basic models called Nova. Last December, the unit took on a broader focus when Amazon appointed longtime cloud executive Peter DeSantis to head the group, replacing Rohit Prasad.
In February, the company lost David Luan, head of its AGI lab, who joined Amazon in 2024 through the purported acquisition of his startup Adept.
Amazon’s spokesperson said the company has been developing major AI models for several years and “remains one of the most important things we work on.”
DeSantis acknowledged in an interview with CNBC last month that Amazon’s models “are not yet at the edge for the largest, most demanding workloads.”
He said Amazon is working to further improve its models and hopes to have one of the “most capable smart models.”
Amazon is scheduled to report second-quarter results next week. The company predicts capital spending for the year will be $200 billion, up more than 50% from 2025, and is borrowing tens of billions of dollars to help finance AI development.
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