Amazon has undertaken significant job cuts within its cloud computing division, Amazon Web Services (AWS), affecting hundreds of positions.
According to a recent financial report, AWS contributes 14% to Amazon’s overall revenue.
According to reports, Amazon considers these decisions as tough, but are crucial for the company’s ongoing investments and optimization efforts aimed at delivering innovative solutions to customers.
Amazon has assured a commitment to continuous growth and hiring, particularly in core business areas.
In a separate move, Amazon has decided to discontinue its self-checkout system, Just Walk Out, across all physical stores. The impacted employees will be offered alternative roles within the company.
Last year, Amazon, led by Jeff Bezos, struck a deal with Anthropic, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI employees, investing an initial $1.25 billion for a minority stake, with potential to increase to $4 billion.
Anthropic utilizes AWS as its primary cloud provider and leverages AWS’s Trainium and Inferentia chips for foundational AI models.
In return, Amazon benefits from Anthropic’s technology, including its AI model named Claude, to enhance its voice assistant Alexa and customer services.
Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, expressed admiration for Anthropic’s team and foundational models, believing that deeper collaboration could significantly enhance customer experiences.
Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, highlighted the expanded partnership’s potential to unlock new possibilities for organizations by deploying Anthropic’s advanced AI systems alongside AWS’s cloud technology.
It’s worth noting that Microsoft has a comparable arrangement with OpenAI.
