Amazon Cut Jobs In Its AGI Unit While Spending $200 Billion On AI Infrastructure This Year

Amazon confirmed Wednesday that it has cut an undisclosed number of jobs within its Artificial General Intelligence unit, the division responsible for building the company's advanced AI models including Nova, and which also oversees silicon development and quantum computing research.

The company did not say how many employees were affected. Employees focused on model customization and post-training reported being let go on LinkedIn. Teams under VP Adeeb Shanaa and VP Vishal Sharma were among those impacted.

The explanation Amazon offered is that it is sharpening its focus. "We're sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts," a spokesperson said. "That focus means some difficult decisions, including eliminating some roles within parts of our AGI organization, even as we continue to invest in the areas most important to our customers' future."

The context makes the decision legible if counterintuitive. Amazon is projecting $200 billion in capital expenditures on AI infrastructure in 2026, more than 50 percent above last year, while simultaneously trimming the research team that works on frontier AI models.

The logic, per analysts, is that Amazon is pivoting away from competing at the frontier of AI research and toward deploying AI for enterprise customers through AWS. It launched a $1 billion initiative to embed AWS engineers with enterprise customers building AI systems just three weeks before these cuts.

Amazon profits from AI inference regardless of which model wins. The cuts to post-training researchers, while chip engineers are retained, is internally consistent with that approach.

Affected U.S. employees receive 90 days of pay and benefits, outplacement support and transitional healthcare. Amazon has now shed more than 30,000 employees since October 2025.