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Amazon has told its white collar employees that their jobs are at risk from artificial intelligence in the next few years, marking a rare explicit warning from a senior tech executive that AI will lead to lay-offs.

Andy Jassy, the ecommerce giant’s chief executive, told employees in a memo on Tuesday that the company was deploying AI across its operations, particularly in its logistics network, to help lower costs.

He said the company wants to increase its use of AI, which would mean job losses.

“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy said. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”

The memo comes as Amazon and other Big Tech groups are under pressure from investors to show they can deliver efficiencies from their vast investment in AI. The company also faces a threat to its business from Donald Trump’s volatile trade policy.

Amazon’s shares are down about 2.5 per cent this year.

The Seattle-based conglomerate has committed to invest roughly $100bn in the current fiscal year, with the bulk directed towards AI infrastructure.

Amazon is racing against rivals Google and Microsoft to take a lead in the AI boom and power its fast-growing profit engine Amazon Web Services.

Jassy last year said the company was striving to “eliminate bureaucracy” and would pursue a flatter structure with less middle management. The group eliminated 27,000 roles in two major rounds of job cuts in 2023, while Amazon Web Services slashed hundreds of roles in 2024.

Technology company bosses have been reluctant to publicly espouse the view that AI will lead to job cuts, preferring to emphasise the increases in efficiency that these models offer.

Microsoft cut 3 per cent of its global workforce in May. Job losses at its headquarters in Washington state disproportionately affected software engineers, according to state filings.

Chief executive Satya Nadella has touted AI’s ability to replace humans in writing code.

“I’d say maybe 20 per cent, 30 per cent of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software,” Nadella told Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in April.

Microsoft maintained the cuts were not precipitated by AI.