3 min readNew DelhiOct 8, 2026 11:22 AM IST
The tech industry is witnessing another round of layoffs. E-commerce giant Amazon, on Wednesday, October 7, said it was cutting some jobs in its Stores business, which works with its main website.
The announcement comes close on the heels of Amazon’s biggest shopping days. The fresh round of job cuts at Amazon is part of a larger round of layoffs that began last year and affected around 30,000 employees, with the latest cuts reportedly affecting fewer than 1,000 employees.
Reportedly, affected employees wrote in an internal Slack channel that they received emails informing them that their roles were being eliminated. According to a report in Business Insider, the channel with 37,000 members subsequently saw queries about severance, internal job postings, and if more notifications were in the offing.
The messages on Slack indicated job cuts across multiple business units, including marketplace support, customer service, and engineering roles in retail business, in both India and the UK.
The layoffs suggest that Amazon’s cost-cutting drive is continuing to reshape its corporate workforce. This is coinciding with the company’s plans to dramatically increase spending on AI. The e-commerce giant slashed around 30,000 jobs in late 2025, and it is now looking at a mammoth $220 billion investment in data centres, chips, and other AI infrastructure.
Meanwhile, an Amazon spokesperson confirmed that the company cut “a small number” of jobs on Tuesday, mainly in its stores business. The company said it had changed the structure of the business to better support its priorities and that the affected employees would receive support during the transition.
The tech sector continues to see significant job cuts. Amazon is not the only tech giant cutting jobs while increasing its focus on AI. Meta laid off around 8,000 employees in May while moving 7,000 other workers to new AI-focused initiatives. Microsoft has cut 5,300 jobs so far this year, including 4,800 in July and another 500 in September.
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According to Layoffs.fyi, 131,382 tech employees have been laid off across 314 companies so far in 2026. In September, companies including Uber, Oracle, Microsoft, Workday, Apple, Expedia, Thinkific and Trustly announced job cuts. Uber announced one of the largest rounds, affecting about 3,300 employees, while Workday cut 525 and Microsoft 500. The cuts reflect a mix of restructuring, cost reduction and changing business priorities, with AI increasingly influencing how major technology companies organise their workforces.
