Andy Jassy on 'Working Through' the AI Jobs Transition

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, has shared his perspective on the wide-scale job cuts taking place as a result of developments in AI. 

When asked in a CNBC interview about his view on Block cutting more 4,000 jobs as part of an AI-driven restructure, he said that while he hadn’t yet “digested” the news, he does believe that changes like this may become more commonplace. 

Saying that he thinks AI “is the most transformative technology shift that we’ve seen in our lifetime”, Andy predicted that many jobs “that we’ve thrown human beings at the last 20 or 30 years, you won’t need as many human beings doing those same jobs.”

Despite this, he suggested that more jobs would be created as a result of AI, saying: “15 years ago, there was no such thing as a cloud solutions architect, and today there are tens of thousands, maybe 100,000 plus, of these types of jobs. 

“So we will have lots of new jobs and, you know, there'll be some sort of transition, and we’ll all work through it together.”

Block's AI-driven restructure

Fintech company Block – led by CEO Jack Dorsey – has announced it is laying off 40% of its workforce, with AI reshaping how the company approaches work. 

Jack described this as a “difficult decision”, saying in a letter to shareholders: “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we’re building, can do more and do it better. And intelligence tool capabilities are compounding faster every week”. 

The company introduced new AI agent capabilities in 2025, and says that its AI agent Goose has brought eight to 10 hours of productivity per week. 

Increases in productivity have played a role in the company’s success in its fourth quarter, with shares rising 20% and profits doubling compared to Q1. 

“Intelligence will be at the core of how the entire company works,” Jack says, “How we make decisions, how we build trust and manage risk, how we build products, and how we serve customers. 

“We're moving toward a model where our customers can build their own features directly on top of our capabilities. 

“That changes the nature of what we are as a company and it dramatically increases the value we can deliver per customer.”

Amazon’s ‘aggressive’ investments in AI

Amazon itself has been prioritising AI on a larger scale in recent years. 

In the company’s Q4 earnings call, Andy said that the company will be “investing aggressively” in AI – which translates to an estimated US$200bn investment in CapEx across Amazon.com, Inc., predominantly in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Saying that customers “really want” more AI integrated in AWS workloads, Andy told those on the call: “I passionately believe that every customer experience that we know of today is going to be reinvented.

“With AI, there are gonna be a whole bunch of customer experiences none of us ever imagined that are gonna become the norms of how we all operate every day and what we use.”

In January, the company announced it was cutting 16,000 roles, as part of efforts to ‘strengthen’ the company, which many believed could be as part of a wider shift to an AI-led operating model. 

Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, shared in a blog post discussing the cuts: “I recognise this is difficult news, which is why I'm sharing what's happening and why.

"As I shared in October, we've been working to strengthen our organisation by reducing layers, increasing ownership and removing bureaucracy. While many teams finalised their organisational changes in October, other teams did not complete that work until now.”