The company cut 16,000 jobs as recently as January.
In a new round of layoffs, Amazon is cutting a “relatively small” number of jobs in its robotics division. Reuters reported that the layoffs will affect at least 100 white-collar jobs. SiliconRepublic.com has reached out to Amazon for comments.
In a statement to media publications, an Amazon spokesperson said, “We regularly review our organisations to make sure teams are best set up to innovate and deliver for our customers.
“Following a recent review, we’ve made the difficult decision to eliminate a relatively small number of robotics roles. We don’t make these decisions lightly, and we’re committed to supporting employees whose roles are affected with severance pay, health insurance benefits and job placement support.”
The latest job cuts come around five weeks after Amazon announced company-wide layoffs of roughly 16,000 workers. According to Amazon, the cuts were meant to reduce organisational layers and remove bureaucracy. RTÉ News reported that around 300 Ireland-based jobs would be at risk in the round.
Meanwhile, the company cut around 150 jobs in Ireland last October within layoffs that affected around 14,000 globally. In total, this took job cuts at the company to roughly 30,000 in a single round.
As of January, Amazon employed more than 6,000 people across various sites in Dublin, Cork and Drogheda, and had roughly 350,000 corporate workers globally. Its total workforce is around 1.5m.
In its last major layoff announcement in January, Amazon said that it would not be announcing “broad reductions” every few months, but added that every team would continue to “make adjustments as appropriate”.
Cuts in the robotics division come after Amazon halted its ‘Blue Jay’ warehouse robotics projects less than six months after launching. Blue Jay was a multi-armed robot designed to sort and move packages.
However, despite the hurdles, Amazon’s robotics division has been hugely successful, having deployed Amazon’s one millionth robot in operations last June. At the same time, the company also launched a new generative AI foundation model designed to make its robot fleet 10pc more efficient.
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