Amazon debuted its next generation of Echo devices a little over a month ago. Dubbed the Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11, the company has designed the new speakers specifically for Alexa+, which is the firm’s more conversational AI assistant. Two of these devices, the Amazon Echo Dot Max and Studio, are finally available to buy.
Amazon’s Echo Dot Max and Studio speakers are available starting from $99.99
Amazon started taking pre-orders for the Echo Dot Max and Studio right after the launch in the US earlier this month, and it has now made them available for purchase. The Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio are up for grabs at $99.99 and $219.99, respectively.
Both come in Graphite and Glacier White color variants. Amazon is offering the Echo Dot Max in an additional Amethyst colorway as well. Amazon Prime consumers in the US are getting Alexa+ Early Access out of the box for free.
The Echo Dot Max and Studio key highlights
For those unaware, the Echo Dot Max is a premium speaker that uses Amazon’s new AZ3 chip. The chip delivers faster Alexa responses and boosts overall performance. The device features a dual-speaker setup with a high-excursion woofer and custom tweeter, providing deeper bass and crisp vocals. It also doubles as a smart-home hub with built-in support for Matter and Zigbee.
As for the latest Echo Studio model, it sports a powerful high-excursion woofer and three full-range drivers. It is 40 percent smaller than its predecessor, yet delivers a more powerful sound. The smart home accessory supports spatial audio and Dolby Atmos. Amazon says the device offers a premium audio performance in a compact form that blends into any living space.
In case you’re interested in the latest Amazon Echo Show 8 and Echo Show 11 displays, you can pre-order them directly from Amazon in the US. The former is available for $179.99, while the latter will set you back $219.99. These will be going on sale on November 29.
Big-ticket smartphone orders always come with a bit of excitement — and a bit of anxiety — but one Bengaluru buyer’s Diwali week surprise turned into something far stranger than anyone could have expected. What was supposed to be a brand-new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 ended up being… a piece of floor tile. And the only reason the buyer isn’t out $2,000 today is because he recorded the unboxing from start to finish.
The incident came to light through NDTV journalist Deepak Bopanna, who shared details of the incident on X. According to the report, the customer, an engineer based in Bengaluru, had ordered the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and paid the full amount upfront via credit card. The Amazon parcel arrived with factory-style packaging intact. Even the Fold 7’s retail box appeared completely sealed.
But when he tore open the box — all while filming the unboxing — the phone-shaped package revealed nothing but a tile placed where the $2,000 smartphone should have been.
The footage turned out to be crucial. With an unboxing video as evidence, Amazon quickly issued a full refund and initiated a detailed investigation into the supply chain to figure out where the scam occurred. The buyer also filed a complaint with local police, who have begun their own probe into the matter.
It’s a rare case, but not unheard of — and it highlights the growing trend of high-value delivery scams, where fake or swapped products are slipped into authentic-looking packaging. Had the customer not recorded the unboxing, resolving the issue could have taken weeks or even months, with no guarantee of reimbursement.
The takeaway is simple: whenever you’re accepting an expensive delivery — whether it’s a phone, laptop, or luxury item — record the unboxing from the moment you receive the parcel.
Amazon has started selling the Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio, two new smart speakers that were unveiled last month. Both devices are built for Alexa+, Amazon’s next-generation AI assistant designed to hold more natural conversations, understand context, and complete daily tasks more efficiently.
Echo Studio (Left) and Echo Dot Max (Right)
Powered by New Custom Chips
At the heart of these new Echo speakers are Amazon’s latest AZ3 and AZ3 Pro processors. These chips come with an integrated AI Accelerator that allows Alexa+ to handle more advanced AI functions directly on the device, improving speed and reducing dependence on cloud processing.
The Echo Dot Max runs on the AZ3 chip. It improves wake-word detection by more than 50 percent and filters background noise more effectively through a new microphone system. The chip also supports better conversational response and smarter sound adaptation for different room environments.
The Echo Studio uses the more powerful AZ3 Pro chip, which enhances both audio and AI performance. It can process larger language models and advanced sound algorithms, allowing Alexa+ to respond faster and manage connected devices more efficiently.
Both speakers also feature Omnisense, Amazon’s new sensor platform that combines audio, ultrasound, Wi-Fi radar, and motion signals. This helps Alexa recognize activities happening around the room and act proactively, such as reminding users of an open door or starting a routine when it detects someone nearby.
Echo Dot Max: Compact with Bigger Sound
The Echo Dot Max is Amazon’s most powerful compact smart speaker yet. It features a new two-way speaker system with a high-excursion woofer for deeper bass and a custom tweeter for sharper high tones. Compared to the Echo Dot (5th Gen), it delivers nearly three times the bass.
Amazon has redesigned the speaker’s internal structure by integrating the audio components directly into the device housing. This doubles the air space, producing stronger and more balanced sound in a compact design.
Echo Studio: Premium Audio in a Smaller Body
The new Echo Studio is 40 percent smaller than the previous version while offering premium, room-filling sound. It includes a high-excursion woofer for rich bass and three full-range drivers arranged to create 360-degree sound coverage. The speaker supports spatial audio and Dolby Atmos, which provide immersive, surround-style sound.
Its spherical design is covered in 3D-knit acoustic fabric, maintaining clear and transparent sound. The familiar light ring now features visual cues powered by a new recognition model for more interactive responses.
Smarter Audio
Both the Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio can be paired with Fire TV sticks to build a surround sound setup using Alexa Home Theater. The system allows up to five speakers to connect, and Alexa automatically tunes them based on the room layout. This provides a full home-theater experience that normally requires expensive equipment and setup.
The Echo Dot Max is priced at $99.99, while the Echo Studio costs $219.99. Both are now available for purchase.
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Amazon has agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement with the US regulator. This comes after the accusations that it misled people into joining its Prime service and made canceling harder than expected. As part of this FTC settlement, a large share of the money will go straight to the Amazon Prime customers in the form of a refund.
Who qualifies for a refund under Amazon’s FTC settlement
Under the settlement, only certain Prime customers will get money back. To be eligible, the user must have purchased the Prime subscription between June 23, 2019, and June 23, 2025. Moreover, the signup must have happened through one of the ads or interfaces that the FTC flagged as misleading. It includes checkout pages, delivery choices, and specific enrollment screens where the user was unable to confirm if they were committing to subscribe to Amazon Prime.
On top of this, there’s a certain usage condition as well. Customers who have barely used the service in their first year of subscription will be given priority. For the first batch, anyone who has used the Prime benefits three times or fewer in the first year will automatically receive a refund. They do not have to fill out any form. Amazon will directly send a refund of up to $51 within 90 days if they meet the criteria.
Here’s how to fill out a claim form to get your share of money back
Once the first batch have received the refunds. Amazon will send claim forms to people who signed up through the same flagged screens but used Prime more actively, up to ten times in their first year. The form will be sent to the registered email. Also, note that there’s no way to manually hit and fill out the form yet. The user will have up to 180 days to submit the claim form. Once verified, they will receive the refund within 30 days.
If both the batches have received their refunds and there is still some money left in the refund fund, the tech giant must continue expanding eligibility gradually until at least $1 billion is distributed to consumers.
Amazon is doubling down on AI investments under CEO Andy Jassy, who says recent job cuts were about reducing bureaucracy, not cutting costs. (GeekWire File Photo / Todd Bishop)
Amazon’s cash tax bill has dropped sharply this year under a new U.S. tax law that lets companies immediately deduct the cost of equipment and research — a policy designed to encourage spending on technology development and other investments.
The decrease is detailed in the company’s third-quarter 10-Q filing, released Friday morning following its blockbuster earnings report. Amazon’s shares rose more than 10% in early trading after beating expectations and reassuring investors about long-term AI demand.
In the filing, Amazon cites the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025” as a key factor in the tax deduction. The situation illustrates how tax changes championed by President Trump and the Republican-led Congress are rewarding U.S. investment and reshaping corporate finances.
But it’s not as simple as a basic tax break: while the law accelerates short-term deductions for domestic investment, it also changes the tax treatment on foreign profits — boosting long-term tax liabilities overall.
According to its quarterly filing, Amazon paid $1.1 billion in cash for income taxes in the third quarter, a 45% decrease from the $2 billion it paid in the same period last year — even as quarterly profits rose 38% to $21.2 billion. For the first nine months of 2025, cash tax payments fell to $6.8 billion, down from $8.2 billion in 2024.
The new law changed two key rules that impact companies making big capital investments.
First, it reinstated 100% “bonus depreciation,” allowing companies to deduct the full cost of new equipment — such as servers for AWS and AI or warehouse robotics — in the year it’s purchased rather than spreading the deduction over many years.
Second, it restored the immediate expensing of domestic R&D costs, reversing a recent rule that required this spending to be amortized over several years.
Boosting capital spending and cutting jobs
For a company like Amazon, these changes create a significant and immediate reduction in taxable income. The tech giant spent $35.1 billion on property and equipment in the third quarter, up 55% from a year earlier, driven by massive investments in AI infrastructure.
Backers of the U.S. tax changes said they would spur investment and job creation in the United States, but Amazon’s situation shows that the reality is more complicated. The company is reaping the benefits of the new tax incentives while eliminating about 14,000 corporate jobs.
Speaking on Amazon’s earnings call, CEO Andy Jassy attributed the layoffs not to cost-cutting but to efforts to simplify operations and reduce bureaucracy after years of growth. Amazon took a $1.8 billion pre-tax charge in the quarter for severance and other costs related to the layoffs.
Amazon isn’t alone in spending big on AI infrastructure or benefitting from the tax changes.
Although they didn’t go into as much detail as Amazon did, Microsoft and Google both referenced the 2025 U.S. tax law in their latest quarterly reports, noting the reinstatement of immediate R&D expensing and accelerated depreciation. Both companies are realizing similar near-term tax benefits as they expand their AI and cloud infrastructure investments.
Long-term tax provision still intact
For Amazon, the changes in U.S. tax law mark a new chapter in a long-running national debate. The company, which faced criticism in years past for paying little or no federal income tax despite strong profits, has long maintained that it pays what it owes under U.S. law.
However, the immediate reduction is only part of the picture.
While Amazon’s cash payments declined, the tax expense reported on its income statement — a figure based on accounting rules rather than cash paid — nearly doubled. The company’s income-tax provision for the first nine months of 2025 was $14.1 billion, up from $6.9 billion in the same period last year.
Amazon’s filing says this increase was also driven by the new tax act, which reduced other benefits, such as the deduction for profits made overseas.
This $7.3 billion gap between its accounting provision ($14.1 billion) and its cash tax bill ($6.8 billion) shows how the new law shifts the timing of tax payments rather than eliminating them. In effect, the deductions reduce the company’s cash outlay for taxes in the short term but will ultimately be paid in future years as those assets are depreciated on the company’s books.
An unprecedented Amazon delivery scam has ruined the Diwali celebration of an Indian techie who received a tile instead of a $2,000 Samsung phone.
NDTV’s Deepak Bopanna brought this bizarre Amazon scam to the light when Amazon delivered a tile to a Bengaluru-based engineer instead of his order of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, costing a huge $2,000.
The netizen opened a complete Amazon packaging on camera, followed by a device unboxing. Fortunately, the precaution of unboxing the device on camera has saved him from a pretty big financial loss as well as mental trauma.
The parcel had no damage or defect from any angle. The phone’s retail box also looks accurate without even a scratch and in a sealed state. Tearing the retail box seal exposed a tile in place of the Galaxy Z Fold 7 device.
Via – Deepak Bopanna / X
Notably, the man has already made a payment for the device through his credit card. The report suggests that the victim has also registered a formal complaint at a local police station, and cops have launched an investigation.
Amazon was also quick to respond, offering the consumer a full refund of the payment he had made. The e-commerce platform has also started an investigation to find where the scam happened in the entire chain until final delivery.
Think if it had not happened on camera? The man may have been facing a lot of troubles, and the same platform who’ve immediately refunded the money may have taken months to address the claim and financial loss.
Whenever you get a precious product delivered, make sure to unbox it with your phone’s camera, from the e-commerce’s packaging to the end. If everything is fine, you can freely delete the recording, but skipping this step could cause huge.
Bengaluru Techie orders a smart phone from @amazonIN gets a stone tile instead. FIR registered. The Samsung Galaxy Fold 7 cost him 186,999. He recorded the unboxing on video, amazon has issued a refund, but cops continue probe. pic.twitter.com/KDMONtqfHJ
US stocks opened higher on Friday,with S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite posting decent gains as Wall Street cheered strong earnings results from Big Tech giants Apple (AAPL) and Amazon (AMZN). Stocks closed lower on Thursday as risk assets shed gains…
Amazon just opened Project Rainier, one of the world’s largest AI compute clusters, in partnership with Anthropic.
Amazon’s third-quarter profits rose 38% to $21.2 billion, but a big part of the jump had nothing to do with its core businesses of selling goods or cloud services.
The company reported a $9.5 billion pre-tax gain from its investment in the AI startup Anthropic, which was included in Amazon’s non-operating income for the quarter.
The windfall wasn’t the result of a sale or cash transaction, but rather accounting rules. After Anthropic raised new funding in September at a $183 billion valuation, Amazon was required to revalue its equity stake to reflect the higher market price, a process known as a “mark-to-market” adjustment.
To put the $9.5 billion paper gain in perspective, the Amazon Web Services cloud business — historically Amazon’s primary profit engine — generated $11.4 billion in quarterly operating profits.
At the same time, Amazon is spending big on its AI infrastructure buildout for Anthropic and others. The company just opened an $11 billion AI data center complex, dubbed Project Rainier, where Anthropic’s Claude models run on hundreds of thousands of Amazon’s Trainium 2 chips.
Amazon spent $35.1 billion on property and equipment in the third quarter, up 55% from a year earlier.
Andy Jassy, the Amazon CEO, sought to reassure Wall Street that the big outlay will be worth it.
“You’re going to see us continue to be very aggressive investing in capacity, because we see the demand,” Jassy said on the company’s conference call. “As fast as we’re adding capacity right now, we’re monetizing it. It’s still quite early, and represents an unusual opportunity for customers and AWS.”
The cash for new data centers doesn’t hit the bottom line immediately, but it comes into play as depreciation and amortization costs are recorded on the income statement over time.
And in that way, the spending is starting to impact on AWS results: sales rose 20% to $33 billion in the quarter, yet operating income increased only 9.6% to $11.4 billion. The gap indicates that Amazon’s heavy AI investments are compressing profit margins in the near term, even as the company bets on the infrastructure build-out to expand its business significantly over time.
Those investments are also weighing on cash generation: Amazon’s free cash flow dropped 69% over the past year to $14.8 billion, reflecting the massive outlays for data centers and infrastructure.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy at the GeekWire Summit in 2021. (GeekWire File Photo / Dan DeLong)
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company’s latest big round of layoffs — about 14,000 corporate jobs — wasn’t triggered by financial strain or artificial intelligence replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble.
Speaking with analysts on Amazon’s quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered.
“The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really AI-driven — not right now, at least,” he said. “Really, it’s culture.”
Jassy’s comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people — and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon’s history.
The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon’s total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI.
But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called “the technology transformation happening right now.”
Jassy, who succeeded founder Jeff Bezos as CEO in mid-2021, has pushed to reduce management layers and eliminate bureaucracy inside the company. Amazon’s corporate headcount tripled between 2017 and 2022, according to The Information, before the company adopted a more cautious hiring approach.
Bloomberg News reported this week that Jassy has told colleagues parts of the company remain “unwieldy” despite efforts to streamline operations — including significant layoffs in 2023 when Amazon cut 27,000 corporate workers in multiple stages.
On Thursday’s call, Jassy said Amazon’s rapid growth led to extra layers of management that slowed decision-making.
“When that happens, sometimes without realizing it, you can weaken the ownership of the people that you have who are doing the actual work and who own most of the two-way door decisions — the ones that should be made quickly and right at the front line,” Jassy said, using a phrase popularized by Bezos to help determine how much thought and planning to put into big and small decisions.
The layoffs, he said, are meant to restore the kind of ownership and agility that defined Amazon’s early years.
“We are committed to operating like the world’s largest startup,” Jassy said, repeating a line he’s used recently.
Given the “transformation” he described happening across the business world, Jassy said it’s more important than ever to be lean, flat, and fast-moving. “That’s what we’re going to do,” he said.
Jassy’s comments came as Amazon reported quarterly revenue of $180.2 billion, up 13% year-over-year, with AWS revenue growth accelerating to 20% — its fastest pace since 2022.
Amazon said it took a $1.8 billion severance-related charge in the quarter related to the layoffs.
Amazon joins other tech giants including Microsoft that have trimmed headcount this year while investing heavily in AI infrastructure.
Amazon has launched the Fire TV Stick 4K Select in India, adding a new model to its Fire TV range. The device delivers 4K Ultra HD streaming with HDR10+ and HLG support and comes with Alexa integration for voice control. It is priced at ₹5,499 and is available on Amazon.in.
The Fire TV Stick 4K Select enables 4K Ultra HD playback with improved brightness, contrast, and color accuracy. It can convert any standard TV into a smart TV, allowing access to major streaming platforms such as Prime Video, Netflix, YouTube, Disney+ Hotstar, Apple TV, and Zee5, with subscriptions required for premium content. It also provides access to more than 4 lakh free titles through ad-supported apps.
The Alexa Voice Remote included with the device supports voice commands in multiple Indian languages, including Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu. The remote has dedicated buttons for apps, power, and volume control. With Alexa, users can perform quick tasks such as checking the weather, playing music, or viewing live camera feeds from compatible smart home devices.
The Fire TV Ambient Experience feature lets users display over 2,000 artworks when the TV is idle, turning the screen into a digital frame. Alexa can also manage connected devices, including lights, speakers, and other smart home appliances.
The Fire TV Stick 4K Select runs on a quad-core 1.7 GHz processor and has 8 GB of internal storage. It supports dual-band Wi-Fi 5 with MIMO and Bluetooth 5.0 with Low Energy, allowing connection with headphones, controllers, and speakers. It offers HDMI output up to 2160p, 1080p, and 720p at 60 fps, and supports HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, H.265, H.264, VP9, and AV1 video formats. The device supports HDMI pass-through for Dolby AC-3, E-AC-3, and E-AC3_JOC audio.
It is compatible with 4K UHD TVs (HDCP 2.2) and HD TVs at 50 or 60 Hz. Accessibility features include VoiceView, Screen Magnifier, Text Banner, Closed Captions, and Audio Descriptions. The box includes the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, Alexa Voice Remote, power adapter and cable, HDMI extender, two AAA batteries, and a quick start guide. The device weighs 42 grams, measures 99 x 30 x 14 mm, and is available in black. Amazon guarantees security and software updates for at least four years after the product’s last sale and offers a one-year warranty.
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An Amazon Prime delivery van outside the company’s Seattle headquarters. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Amazon beat estimates for its third-quarter earnings with $180.2 billion in revenue, up 13% year-over-year, and earnings per share of $1.95, up from $1.43 in the year-ago period.
Net income was $21.2 billion, up from $15.3 billion last year.
Wall Street expected $177.7 billion in revenue, and earnings per share of $1.56.
Amazon shares were up more than 11% in after-hours trading. Growth in the company’s stock has lagged behind rivals Microsoft and Google this year.
Investors were likely pleased with a re-acceleration in Amazon’s closely watched cloud computing unit, which reported $33 billion in sales, up 20% year-over-year and topping analyst estimates. In a press release, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AWS is “growing at a pace we haven’t seen since 2022.”
“We continue to see strong demand in AI and core infrastructure, and we’ve been focused on accelerating capacity — adding more than 3.8 gigawatts in the past 12 months,” Jassy added.
The cloud growth should help Amazon counter the Wall Street narrative that its cloud business is falling behind Microsoft and Google in pursuing the AI opportunity.
Amazon and other cloud giants are pouring billions of dollars into capital expenditures to support AI initiatives. Amazon said earlier this year it expects to increase capital expenditures to more than $100 billion in 2025.
The company makes most of its operating profits from AWS — $11.4 billion in the third quarter, more than half Amazon’s total operating income.
AWS was hit with a major outage last week that took down several major sites and services. It blamed an internal issue within the cloud giant’s infrastructure.
Amazon’s overall operating income reached $17.4 billion in the third quarter — flat compared to a year ago. The company had forecast operating income of $15.5 billion to $20.5 billion.
The company said its Q3 operating income reflected two special charges:
A $2.5 billion charge related to a recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission related to Prime memberships.
About $1.8 billion in estimated severance costs related to its massive 14,000 corporate layoff announced earlier this week.
The workforce reduction comes amid an efficiency push at Amazon. Jassy has cited a need to reduce bureaucracy and become more efficient in the new era of artificial intelligence.
Reuters reported this week that the number of layoffs could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people, which is still a possibility as the cutbacks continue into next year.
Jassy told employees in a company-wide memo earlier this year that Amazon’s corporate workforce will shrink in the coming years as generative AI takes hold.
Online store sales were $67.4 billion, up 10%.
The revenue includes sales from the company’s annual Prime Day sales event from July 8-11.
Analysts are watching for impact from tariffs on the company’s retail business, which still makes up the largest portion of its overall revenue.
In its Q1 earnings report in April, Amazon added “tariff and trade policies” to a list of factors that create uncertainty in its results, joining existing risks such as inflation, interest rates, and regional labor market constraints.
Here are more details from the second quarter earnings report:
Advertising: The company’s ad business brought in $17.7 billion in revenue in the quarter, up 24% from the year-ago period, topping estimates. Advertising, along with AWS, is a major profit engine.
Third-party seller services: Revenue from third-party seller services was up 12% to $42.5 billion.
Shipping costs: Amazon spent $25.4 billion on shipping in Q3, up 8%.
Physical stores: The category, which includes Whole Foods and other Amazon grocery stores, posted revenue of $5.6 billion, up 7%.
Headcount: Amazon employs 1.57 million people, up 2% year-over-year. That figure does not include seasonal and contract workers.
Prime: Subscription services revenue, which includes Prime memberships, came in at $12.6 billion, up 11%.
Guidance: The company forecasts Q4 sales between $206 billion and $213 billion. Operating income is expected to range between $21 billion and $26 billion, compared with $21.2 billion in the year-ago quarter.
Amidst a massive layoff at Amazon, which cut 14,000+ employees and killed further development of New World: Aeternum, has also reportedly killed (for a second time) the Lord of the Rings MMO that was in production at Amazon Game Studios. Spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, a now former Amazon Game Studios senior gameplay engineer, Ashleigh Amrine, confirmed in a post on her personal LinkedIn page that the "fledgling Lord of the Rings game" was part of the cuts at Amazon. "This morning I was part of layoffs at Amazon Games, alongside my incredibly talented peers on New World and our […]
Amazon’s headquarters towers and The Spheres in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Software development engineers make up the largest group of employees affected by Amazon’s latest round of layoffs in its home state.
GeekWire reported Tuesday on a new filing from the Washington Employment Security Department revealing that the tech giant is laying off 2,303 corporate employees, mostly in Seattle and Bellevue. The cuts are part of broader layoffs announced Tuesday that will impact about 14,000 workers globally.
A detailed list included with the state filing reveals which roles are impacted by the layoffs. More than 600 software development engineering roles are being cut among the 2,303 affected workers in Washington — more than a quarter of total cuts.
The trend mirrors layoffs at Microsoft earlier this year, as companies reassess their engineering needs amid the rise of AI-driven coding tools. Amazon itself recently introduced its own AI coding tool Kiro in July, and has reportedly explored adopting the AI code assistant Cursor for employees.
The layoffs of software engineers reflect a striking shift for an industry that has traditionally relied on coders to help build and maintain the backbone of digital platforms.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet,” Amazon HR chief Beth Galetti wrote in a message to employees Tuesday, saying it’s enabling teams to “innovate much faster than ever before.”
Amazon’s engineering layoffs are part of a broader industry reckoning with AI’s impact on traditional tech roles and white-collar jobs. A Wall Street Journal report this week detailed how the adoption of AI is contributing to a wave of layoffs across the country. Axios published a story Wednesday on a similar topic with the headline: How an AI job apocalypse unfolds.
More than 500 manager-level titles were also heavily affected by Amazon’s layoffs in Washington, according to the filing — aligning with a company-wide push to use the cutbacks to help reduce bureaucracy and operate more efficiently.
Amazon also made reductions in recruiting and HR roles. Other impacted areas include marketing, advertising, and legal.
The largest single site impact is at SEA40, Amazon’s Doppler office building on 7th Avenue in Seattle, where 361 employees are affected, according to the filing.
More than 100 remote employees based in Washington are also being let go.
Amazon will lay off 2,303 corporate employees in Washington state, primarily in its Seattle and Bellevue offices, according to a filing with the state Employment Security Department that provides the first geographic breakdown of the company’s 14,000 global job cuts.
A detailed list included with the state filing shows a wide array of impacted roles, including software engineers, program managers, product managers, and designers, as well as a significant number of recruiters and human resources staff.
Senior and principal-level roles are among those being cut, aligning with a company-wide push to use the cutbacks to help reduce bureaucracy and operate more efficiently.
Amazon announced the cuts Tuesday morning, part of a larger push by CEO Andy Jassy to streamline the company. Jassy had previously told Amazon employees in June that efficiency gains from AI would likely lead to a smaller corporate workforce over time.
In a memo from HR chief Beth Galetti, the company signaled that further cutbacks will continue into 2026. Reuters reported Monday that the number of layoffs could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people, which is still possible as the layoffs continue into next year.
Amazon’s headquarters campus in Seattle. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Reaction to a huge round of layoffs rippled across Amazon and beyond on Tuesday as the Seattle-based tech giant confirmed that it was slashing 14,000 corporate and tech jobs.
We’ve rounded up some of what’s being said online and/or shared with GeekWire:
‘Never been laid off before’
A megathread on Reddit served as a collection of comments by impacted employees who posted about their level, location, org and years of service at Amazon.
Workers across ads, recruitment, robotics, retail, Prime Video, Amazon Games, business development, North American Stores, finance, devices and services, Amazon Autos, and more used the thread to vent.
“TPM II for Amazon Robotics, 6.5 years there. Still processing this, I’ve never been laid off before.”
“L6 SDEIII, started as SDEI 7 years ago. I went L4 to L6 in 3 years. My last performance review I got raising the bar. Thought I was a top performer but guess I’m expendable.”
“Never been laid off before feels overwhelming on VISA! Someone please help me understand next steps in terms of VISA, if I am not able to get H1b sponsoring job in next 90 days will I have to uproot everything here and go back?”
“I heard AWS layoffs come after re:invent to avoid customer disruption and bad press.”
“It’s heartbreaking how impersonal and abrupt these layoffs have become. People who’ve given years to a company are finding out in minutes that they’re done.”
“Wait, I’m sorry: Amazon made people relocate, switch their kids’ schools, and bookend their days with traffic for RTO only to lay them off via a 3 a.m. text? What happened to the vibe and conversations that only being together at the office could allow?” Coulter wrote on LinkedIn.
‘Reduced functionality’
Some employees shared how they were quickly locked out of work laptops, expressing confusion about whether that was how they were supposed to learn about being terminated.
“I lost access to everything immediately :( ,” one Reddit user said.
Others discussed how they should have found time to transfer important work examples or positive interactions related to their performance over to personal computers.
“One thing I would recommend for everyone is to back up your personal files onto your personal laptop,” one user said on Reddit. “I used to keep all my accolades and praise in a quip file along with all my 2×2 write ups and MBR/QBR write ups cataloging my wins. When I found out I got laid off my head was spinning so I went outside for a walk, by the time I returned I was locked out of my laptop and no longer had access to anything.”
Amazon human resources chief Beth Galetti pinned the layoffs in part on the need to reduce bureaucracy and become more efficient in the new era of artificial intelligence. Others looked for deeper meaning in the cuts.
In a post on LinkedIn, Yahoo! Finance Executive Editor Brian Rozzi said stock price is likely a key consideration when it comes to top execs and the Amazon board signing off on such mass layoffs.
Amazon’s stock was up about 1% on Tuesday to $229 per share.
“If the layoffs keep jacking up the stock price, maybe I can retire instead,” one longtime employee told GeekWire.
Entrepreneur and investor Jason Calacanis posted on X about how AI was coming for middle managers and those with “rote jobs” faster than anyone expected. He encouraged workers to become a founder and do a startup before it’s too late.
Hard-hit divisions
Mid-level managers in Amazon’s retail division were heavily impacted by Tuesday’s cuts, according to internal data obtained by Business Insider.
More than 78% of the roles eliminated were held by managers assigned L5 to L7 designations, BI reported. (L5 is typically the starting point for managers at Amazon, with more seniority assigned to higher levels.)
BI also said that U.S.-focused data showed that more than 80% of employees laid off Tuesday worked in Amazon’s retail business, spanning e-commerce, human resources, and logistics.
Steve Boom, VP of audio, Twitch, and games said in a memo shared with The Verge that “significant role reductions” would be felt at studios in Irvine and San Diego, Calif., as well on Amazon’s central publishing teams.
“We have made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work — specifically around MMOs [massively multiplayer online games] — within Amazon Game Studios,” Boom wrote.
Current titles in Amazon’s MMO lineup include “New World: Aeternum,” “Throne and Liberty,” and “Lost Ark.” Amazon also previously announced that it would be developing a “Lord of the Rings” MMO.
‘Ripple effects throughout the community’
Amazon employees and others line up at a food truck near Amazon offices in Seattle’s South Lake Union neighborhood. (GeekWire File Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Jon Scholes, president and CEO of the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), has previously praised Amazon for its mandate calling for employees to return to the office five days per week, saying that the foot traffic from thousands of tech workers in the city is a necessary element to helping downtown Seattle rebound from the pandemic.
On Tuesday, Scholes reacted to Amazon’s layoffs in a statement to GeekWire:
“As downtown’s largest employer, a workforce change of this scale has ripple effects throughout the community — on individual employees and families and our small businesses that rely on the weekday foot traffic customer base. In addition, these jobs buttress our tax base that helps fund the city services we all depend on. Employers have options for where they locate jobs, and we want to ensure downtown Seattle is the most attractive place to invest and grow. We must provide vibrancy and a predictable regulatory environment in a competitive landscape because other cities would welcome the jobs currently based in downtown.”
Amazon is laying off more than 14,000 corporate jobs today, and per a report from Bloomberg, the video games division, Amazon Game Studios, is not immune to the cuts. While Amazon doesn't specify exactly how many people from its video games division will be laid off, a statement from Steve Boom, Amazon's head of audio, Twitch, and games, does call the cut "significant," and says that the cuts are happening despite Amazon being "proud" of the success it has had. While the studio's MMO, New World, isn't mentioned by name, the statement does say that Amazon is halting its game […]
Amazon said on Tuesday that it plans to reduce its corporate workforce by 14,000 jobs as it seeks to reduce bureaucracy, remove layers, and invest more in its AI strategy.
Yes, it’s true that many companies went out of business during the pandemic, and many people lost their jobs. However, the tech industry actually saw a surge in hirings. But it looks like that hiring spree is coming to a head. According to a report from Reuters, Amazon could be looking to conduct corporate layoffs.
Amazon to conduct corporate layoffs
Based on the report, Amazon corporate layoffs could be the largest layoffs the company conducted since 2023. The Reuters report suggests that Amazon could be looking to layoff up to 30,000 corporate positions. This is higher than the 27,000 job cuts that the company had previously conducted.
30,000 positions seem like a lot, but to Amazon, that’s roughly 10% of its corporate workforce. This will cover various departments such as human resources, cloud computing, advertising, and more. However, the total number of staff reductions hasn’t been finalized yet, but for now, it is estimated to be around 30,000.
Is AI coming for our jobs?
Many companies, not just Amazon, conduct layoffs periodically as a way to cut costs. But when there’s a surge in demand, these companies tend to hire again. However, what’s worrying about the recent layoffs is that some of these positions may never be filled by humans again.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said back in June that some jobs will be cut because of AI. Jassy said at that time, “As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
It is true that as AI becomes smarter and more capable that jobs that humans used to do may no longer be necessary. If an AI can generate reports and summarize information in minutes compared to the hours it takes a human, it makes sense who you’d rather keep from an efficiency point of view.
But this doesn’t necessarily mean that humans are doomed to be jobless. The rise of AI represents a new industry that we can transition to. As the saying goes, when one door closes, another opens.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has been pushing to reduce bureaucracy across the company. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Amazon confirmed Tuesday that it is cutting about 14,000 corporate jobs, citing a need to reduce bureaucracy and become more efficient in the new era of artificial intelligence.
In a message to employees, posted on the company’s website, Amazon human resources chief Beth Galetti signaled that additional cutbacks are expected to take place into 2026, while indicating that the company will also continue to hire in key strategic areas.
Reuters reported Monday that the number of layoffs could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people, which is still a possibility as the cutbacks continue into next year. At that scale, the overall number of job cuts could eventually be the largest in Amazon’s history, exceeding the 27,000 positions that the company eliminated in 2023 across multiple rounds of layoffs.
“This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the Internet, and it’s enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before,” wrote Galetti, senior vice president of People Experience and Technology.
The goal is “to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” she explained.
Galetti wrote that the company is “shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs” — indicating that layoff decisions are based whether teams and roles align with the company’s direction.
Amazon’s corporate workforce numbered around 350,000 people in early 2023, the last time the company provided a public number. At that scale, the initial reduction of 14,000 represents about 4% of Amazon’s corporate workforce. However, the number is a much smaller fraction of its overall workforce of 1.55 million people, which includes workers in its warehouses.
Cuts are expected across multiple regions and countries, but they are likely to hit hard in the Seattle region, home to the company’s first headquarters and its largest corporate workforce. The region has already felt the impact of major layoffs by Microsoft and others, as companies adjust to the uncertain economy and accelerate investments in AI-driven automation.
Many displaced tech workers here have found job searches slower and more competitive than in previous cycles in which the tech sector was more insulated than other industries.
The cuts at Amazon are the latest pullback after a pandemic-era hiring spree. They come two days before the company’s third quarter earnings report. Amazon and other cloud giants have been pouring billions into capital expenses to boost AI capacity. Cutting jobs is one way of showing operating-expense discipline to Wall Street.
In a memo to employees in June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote that he expected Amazon’s total corporate workforce to get smaller over time as a result of efficiency gains from AI.
Jassy took over as Amazon CEO from founder Jeff Bezos in mid-2021. In recent years he has been pushing to reduce management layers and eliminate bureaucracy inside the company, saying he wants Amazon to operate like the “world’s largest startup.”
Bloomberg News reported this week that Jassy has told colleagues that parts of the company remain “unwieldy” despite the 2023 layoffs and other efforts to streamline operations.
As part of its report, Reuters cited sources saying the magnitude of the cuts is also a result of Amazon’s strict return-to-office policy failing to cause enough employees to quit voluntarily. Amazon brought workers back five days a week earlier this year.
Impacted teams and people will be notified of the layoffs today, Galetti wrote.
Amazon is offering most impacted employees 90 days to find a new role internally, though the timing may vary based on local laws, according to the message. Those who do not find a new position at Amazon or choose to leave will be offered severance pay, outplacement services, health insurance benefits, and other forms of support.
Original story: Amazon is preparing to lay off as many as 30,000 corporate employees in a sweeping workforce reduction intended to reduce expenses and compensate for over-hiring during the pandemic, according to a report from Reuters on Monday.
GeekWire has contacted Amazon for comment.
Layoff notifications will start going out via email on Tuesday, according to Reuters, which cited people familiar with the matter. One employee at Amazon told GeekWire the workforce is on “pins and needles” in anticipation of cuts.
Bloomberg reported that cuts will impact several business units, including logistics, payments, video games, and Amazon Web Services.
Amazon’s corporate workforce numbered around 350,000 in early 2023. It has not provided an updated number since then.
The company’s last significant layoff occurred in 2023 when it cut 27,000 corporate workers in multiple stages. Since then the company has made a series of smaller layoffs across different business units.
Fortune reported this month that Amazon planned to cut up to 15% of its human resources staff as part of a wider layoff.
Amazon has taken a cautious hiring approach with its corporate workforce, following years of huge headcount growth. The company’s corporate headcount tripled between 2017 and 2022, according to The Information.
The reported cuts come as Amazon is investing heavily in artificial intelligence. The company said earlier this year it expects to increase capital expenditures to more than $100 billion in 2025, up from $83 billion in 2024, with a majority going toward building out capacity for AI in AWS.
“We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” he wrote. “It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
Amazon reported 1.54 million total employees as of June 30 — up 3% year-over-year. The majority of the company’s workforce is made up of warehouse workers.
Amazon employs roughly 50,000 corporate and tech workers in buildings across its Seattle headquarters, with another 12,000 in Bellevue.
The company reports its third quarter earnings on Thursday afternoon.
Fellow Seattle-area tech giant Microsoft has laid off more than 15,000 people since May as it too invests in AI and data center capacity. Microsoft has cut more than 3,200 roles in Washington this year.
Last week, The New York Times cited internal Amazon documents and interviews to report that the company plans to automate as much as 75% of its warehouse operations by 2033. According to the report, the robotics team expects automation to “flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years,” allowing it to avoid hiring more than 600,000 workers even as sales continue to grow.
GeekWire reporter Kurt Schlosser contributed to this story.
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop tries Amazon’s new smart delivery glasses in a simulated demo.
SAN FRANCISCO — Putting on Amazon’s new smart delivery glasses felt surprisingly natural from the start. Despite their high-tech components and slightly bulky design, they were immediately comfortable and barely heavier than my normal glasses.
Then a few lines of monochrome green text and a square target popped up in the right-hand lens — reminding me that these were not my regular frames.
Occupying just a portion of my total field of view, the text showed an address and a sorting code: “YLO 339.” As I learned, “YLO” represented the yellow tote bag where the package would normally be found, and “339” was a special code on the package label.
My task: find the package with that code. Or more precisely, let the glasses find them.
Amazon image from a separate demo, showing the process of scanning packages with the new glasses.
As soon as I looked at the correct package label, the glasses recognized the code and scanned the label automatically. A checkmark appeared on a list of packages in the glasses.
Then an audio alert played from the glasses: “Dog on property.”
When all the packages were scanned, the tiny green display immediately switched to wayfinding mode. A simple map appeared, showing my location as a dot, and the delivery destination marked with pins. In this simulation, there were two pins, indicating two stops.
After putting the package on the doorstep, it was time for proof of delivery. Instead of reaching for a phone, I looked at the package on the doorstep and pressed a button once on the small controller unit —the “compute puck” — on my harness. The glasses captured a photo.
With that, my simulated delivery was done, without ever touching a handheld device.
In my very limited experience, the biggest concern I had was the potential to be distracted — focusing my attention on the text in front of my eyes rather than the world around me. I understand now why the display automatically turns off when a van is in motion.
But when I mentioned that concern to the Amazon leaders guiding me through the demo, they pointed out that the alternative is looking down at a device. With the glasses, your gaze is up and largely unobstructed, theoretically making it much easier to notice possible hazards.
Beyond the fact that they’re not intended for public release, that simplicity is a key difference between Amazon’s utilitarian design and other augmented reality devices — such as Meta Ray-Bans, Apple Vision Pro, and Magic Leap — which aim to more fully enhance or overlay the user’s environment.
One driver’s experience
KC Pangan, who delivers Amazon packages in San Francisco and was featured in Amazon’s demo video, said wearing the glasses has become so natural that he barely notices them.
Pangan has been part of an Amazon study for the past two months. On the rare occasions when he switches back to the old handheld device, he finds himself thinking, “Oh, this thing again.”
“The best thing about them is being hands-free,” Pangan said in a conversation on the sidelines of the Amazon Delivering the Future event, where the glasses were unveiled last week.
Without needing to look down at a handheld device, he can keep his eyes up and stay alert for potential hazards. With another hand free, he can maintain the all-important three points of contact when climbing in or out of a vehicle, and more easily carry packages and open gates.
The glasses, he said, “do practically everything for me” — taking photos, helping him know where to walk, and showing his location relative to his van.
While Amazon emphasizes safety and driver experience as the primary goals, early tests hint at efficiency gains, as well. In initial tests, Amazon has seen up to 30 minutes of time savings per shift, although execs cautioned that the results are preliminary and could change with wider testing.
KC Pangan, an Amazon delivery driver in San Francisco who has been part of a pilot program for the new glasses. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Regulators, legislators and employees have raised red flags over new technology pushing Amazon fulfillment and delivery workers to the limits of human capacity and safety. Amazon disputes this premise, and calls the new glasses part of a larger effort to use technology to improve safety.
Using the glasses will be fully optional for both its Delivery Service Partners (DSPs) and their drivers, even when they’re fully rolled out, according to the company. The system also includes privacy features, such as a hardware button that allows drivers to turn off all sensors.
For those who use them, the company says it plans to provide the devices at no cost.
Despite the way it may look to the public, Amazon doesn’t directly employ the drivers who deliver its packages in Amazon-branded vans and uniforms. Instead, it contracts with DSPs, ostensibly independent companies that hire drivers and manage package deliveries from inside Amazon facilities.
With the introduction of smart glasses and other tech initiatives, including a soon-to-be-expanded training program, Amazon is deepening its involvement with DSPs and their drivers — potentially raising more questions about who truly controls the delivery workforce.
From ‘moonshot’ to reality
The smart glasses, still in their prototype phase, trace their origins to a brainstorming session about five years ago, said Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s vice president of transportation.
Each year, the team brainstorms big ideas for the company’s delivery system. During one of those sessions, a question emerged: What if drivers didn’t have to interact with any technology at all?
“The moonshot idea we came up with was, what if there was no technology that the driver had to interact with — and they could just follow the physical process of delivering a package from the van to the doorstep?” Tomay said in an interview. “How do we make that happen so they don’t have to use a phone or any kind of tech that they have to fiddle with?”
Beryl Tomay, Amazon’s vice president of transportation, introduces the smart glasses at Amazon’s Delivering the Future event. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
That question led the team to experiment with different approaches before settling on glasses. It seemed kind of crazy at first, Tomay said, but they soon realized the potential to improve safety and the driver experience. Early trials with delivery drivers confirmed the theory.
“The hands-free aspect of it was just kind of magical,” she said, summing up the reaction from early users.
The project has already been tested with hundreds of delivery drivers across more than a dozen DSPs. Amazon plans to expand those trials in the coming months, with a larger test scheduled for November. The goal is to collect more feedback before deciding when the technology will be ready for wider deployment.
Typically, Amazon would have kept a new hardware project secret until later in its development. But Reuters reported on the existence of the project nearly a year ago. (The glasses were reportedly code-named “Amelia,” but they were announced without a name.) And this way, Amazon can get more delivery partners involved, get input, and make improvements.
Future versions may also expand the system’s capabilities, using sensors and data to automatically recognize potential hazards such as uneven walkways.
How the technology works
Amazon’s smart glasses are part of a system that also includes a small wearable computer and a battery, integrated with Amazon’s delivery software and vehicle systems.
The lenses are photochromatic, darkening automatically in bright sunlight, and can be fitted with prescription inserts. Two cameras — one centered, one on the left — support functions such as package scanning and photo capture for proof of delivery.
A built-in flashlight switches on automatically in dim conditions, while onboard sensors help the system orient to the driver’s movement and surroundings.
Amazon executive Viraj Chatterjee and driver KC Pangan demonstrate the smart glasses.
The glasses connect by a magnetic wire to a small controller unit, or “compute puck,” worn on the chest of a heat-resistant harness. The controller houses the device’s AI models, manages the visual display, and handles functions such as taking a delivery photo. It also includes a dedicated emergency button that connects drivers directly to Amazon’s emergency support systems.
On the opposite side of the chest, a swappable battery keeps the system balanced and running for a full route. Both components are designed for all-day comfort — the result, Tomay said, of extensive testing with drivers to ensure that wearing the gear feels natural when they’re moving around.
Connectivity runs through the driver’s official Amazon delivery phone via Bluetooth, and through the vehicle itself using a platform called “Fleet Edge” — a network of sensors and onboard computing modules that link the van’s status to the glasses.
This connection allows the glasses to know precisely when to activate, when to shut down, and when to sync data. When a van is put in park, the display automatically activates, showing details such as addresses, navigation cues, and package information. When the vehicle starts moving again, the display turns off — a deliberate safety measure so drivers never see visual data while driving.
Data gathered by the glasses plays a role in Amazon’s broader mapping efforts. Imagery and sensor data feed into “Project Wellspring,” a system that uses AI to better model the physical world. This helps Amazon refine maps, identify the safest parking spots, pinpoint building entrances, and optimize walking routes for future deliveries.
Amazon says the data collection is done with privacy in mind. In addition to the driver-controlled sensor shut-off button, any imagery collected is processed to “blur or remove personally identifiable information” such as faces and license plates before being stored or used.
The implications go beyond routing and navigation. Conceivably, the same data could also lay the groundwork for greater automation in Amazon’s delivery network over time.
Testing the delivery training
In addition to trying the glasses during the event at Amazon’s Delivery Station in Milpitas, Calif., I experienced firsthand just how difficult the job of delivering packages can be.
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop uses an Amazon training program that teaches drivers to walk safely on slippery surfaces.
Strapped into a harness for a slip-and-fall demo, I learned how easily a driver can lose footing on slick surfaces if not careful to walk properly.
I tried a VR training device that highlighted hidden hazards like pets sleeping under tires and taught me how to navigate complex intersections safely.
My turn in the company’s Rivian van simulator proved humbling. Despite my best efforts, I ran red lights and managed to crash onto virtual sidewalks.
GeekWire’s Todd Bishop after a highly unsuccessful attempt to use Amazon’s driving simulator.
The simulator, known as the Enhanced Vehicle Operation Learning Virtual Experience (EVOLVE), has been launched at Amazon facilities in Colorado, Maryland, and Florida, and Amazon says it will be available at 40 sites by the end of 2026.
It’s part of what’s known as the Integrated Last Mile Driver Academy (iLMDA), a program available at 65 sites currently, which Amazon says it plans to expand to more than 95 delivery stations across North America by the end of 2026.
“Drivers are autonomous on the road, and the amount of variables that they interact with on a given day are countless,” said Anthony Mason, Amazon’s director of delivery training and programs, who walked me through the training demos. One goal of the training, he said, is to give drivers a toolkit to pull from when they face challenging situations.
Suffice it to say, this is not the job for me. But if Amazon’s smart glasses live up to the company’s expectations, they might be a step forward for the drivers doing the real work.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is interviewed during Amazon’s first-ever live streamed NBA game on Friday. (Screenshots via Prime Video stream)
“It is here, it is real, it is happening,” said play-by-play announcer Ian Eagle. “The NBA on Prime.”
And with that, Amazon’s foray into live streaming NBA games tipped off.
Amazon marked a major milestone with its growing sports portfolio on Friday, broadcasting its first-ever live NBA game around the world. The matchup — Celtics vs. Knicks — was part of an 11-year deal that gives Amazon exclusive rights to select regular season and playoff games.
We watched the game via Prime Video — accessible with a $139/year Prime subscription — and came away impressed.
The stream ran seamlessly across Fire TV, iPhone, and MacBook. The quality was crisp, load times near-instant, and there wasn’t a hint of lag — at least on a home WiFi connection. Amazon’s 1080p HDR video and 5.1 surround sound were a slam dunk.
The broadcast looked and felt like a traditional national telecast.The graphics mirrored what fans expect from ESPN or TNT, the commentary came from familiar voices — Eagle and Stan Van Gundy — and the pregame show from featured a slick set with former NBA stars at Amazon MGM Studios.
Amazon’s pre-game show features a LED court that helps analysts explain basketball dynamics. The show includes (from left) host Taylor Rooks and former NBA stars Steve Nash, Udonis Haslem, Dirk Nowitzki, and Blake Griffin.
But under the surface, Amazon quietly tested a new frontier: in-stream sports betting.
The most noticeable new feature was the FanDuel integration, Amazon’s latest experiment in blending live sports and interactive technology.
Fans watching on Fire TV could log into their FanDuel accounts through Prime Video to view real-time betting information and track wagers directly within the broadcast.
You can’t make actual bets on Prime Video — not yet, at least— but it marks a subtle yet significant shift in how live sports may evolve on streaming platforms.
I was surprised when NBA Commissioner Adam Silver joined the broadcast for a live interview. Sideline reporter Cassidy Hubbarth opened by asking about the scandal.
Silver said he was “deeply disturbed” upon hearing the news.
“There’s nothing more important to the league and its fans than the integrity of the competition,” he said.
Silver also praised Amazon’s coverage: “I should have started [by saying] how excited we are to be on Amazon,” he said. “I guess I wouldn’t have predicted that my first interview on Amazon would be about sports betting.”
The interview underscored how Amazon’s coverage didn’t shy away from real-time news relevance — adding a traditional journalistic layer within a tech-powered broadcast.
It was also a surreal moment: the NBA’s top official discussing a sports betting scandal during the league’s debut on a platform now integrating betting tools into its stream.
Amazon has other new tech-fueled features including advanced NBA stats powered by Amazon Web Services — but I didn’t notice that during Friday’s broadcast.
One of the only stumbles for me came on the Fire TV user experience, which feels clunky compared to mobile or desktop. Navigation wasn’t intuitive, and the remote’s button mapping made simple actions harder than expected.
But overall, the whole experience felt less like a tech demo and more like a finished product.
Amazon.com’s homepage promoted the NBA game.
Amazon’s sports strategy is crystalizing: use live sports to drive Prime signups and boost engagement across its ecosystem. The broadcast was promoted on Amazon’s homepage and apps. Live sports also helps fuel Amazon’s growing advertising business.
Bloomberg reported that Amazon is paying $1.8 billion annually for the NBA rights.
As more people cut the cord, sports leagues are increasingly partnering with tech companies as their existing deals with traditional cable providers expire. Companies like Amazon, Apple, and Netflix are hungry for valuable content such as live sports to draw more subscribers to their respective platforms.
Amazon also aired the Timberwolves vs. Lakers game on Friday evening. It will stream 66 regular season games this year, along with some playoff games.
The company also separate deals to air the NFL’s Thursday Night Football, WNBA, and Premier League, among other sports-related programming on its Prime Video platform.
The NBA debut on Friday was a reminder of Amazon’s approach to live sports: combine the reliability of broadcast TV with subtle tech layers — such as betting, data, and e-commerce — built on its AWS cloud infrastructure and Prime membership model.
Day job: Senior design technologist for Amazon Devices, working on concepts for new devices or new features on existing devices, such as Fire TV, Alexa, and Echo smart speakers.
Out-of-office passion: Using machines to create art.
Before he pursued a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Maksim Surguy made an initial — and brief — run at a bachelor’s in art.
“Two weeks later, I realized that I suck at art and I switched to computer science,” he laughed.
Fourteen years after completing his education at California State University, Fullerton, Surguy has found happiness and success in marrying the two disciplines, as a technologist and an artist in Seattle.
“My sketching is not to the level that I want, so instead I use code to create artwork,” he said in describing the “robot art” that occupies his free time.
Surguy not only relies on machines to generate his artwork, he creates the software tools that facilitate such art, whether the finished pieces exist as digital NFTs or as physical works such as pen plotter drawings made via scalable vector graphics.
“I spend a lot more time making the tools than actually using them,” Surguy said. “But other people use them to actually make something. So I enjoy both sides of this.”
A screenshot from a tutorial video demonstrating Maks Surguy’s workflow for the artwork “Vector Wave, 2022.” (Image courtesy of Maks Surguy)
For a hardware/software project, he created a 3D-printed drawing machine with his own electronics program. During the process, he couldn’t find a community for like-minded people who make such things. So he started DrawingBots, a website/Discord that’s attracted thousands of artists and engineers.
Surguy was born and raised in Ukraine and was an accomplished breakdancer who competed as a professional in Eastern Europe when he was younger. He moved to the U.S. in 2004.
He’s been at Amazon for six years and his artwork has been displayed in the company’s headquarters buildings, in public exhibitions — including at Seattle’s NFT Museum, and on his website and social media channels. He’s also written extensively about technology.
And in the blurring space between human and AI-created artwork, he’s leaning further into technology.
“I use AI for a lot of things, and especially now with code, it makes it easier to create tools that are custom and specific for whatever use case,” Surguy said. “I just open-sourced one last weekend. It’s a tool that allows artists to preview their artwork, how it’s going to look before they make it on paper. So it saves them time and money and art supplies.”
Prints of some of Maksim Surguy’s “plotter” artwork. (Photo courtesy of Maks Surguy)
Most rewarding aspect of this pursuit: Surguy most enjoys the growing community he helped foster around the tools and art he makes.
“I got to know thousands of people that do this kind of stuff and are very interesting people,” he said. “Some of them were TED speakers. Some of them are PhDs, very well known researchers, scientists, artists. I had conversations with all of these people and consider some of them my friends. So that’s the most rewarding part.”
The lessons he brings back to work: “This kind of procedural and algorithmic art definitely has a place in making products that are digital experiences,” Surguy said of the connection between his hobby and his work at Amazon.
For example, his Devices team launched a dynamic art feature for Fire TV: a screen saver that created artwork on the fly based on data such as weather, time of day, and other inputs.
Surguy said the ideas he generates outside of work serve as inspiration for what he creates at work, whether it’s creative coding or simply expanding the boundaries of what he makes and how he makes it.
Do you have an out-of-office hobby or interesting side hustle that you’re passionate about that would make for a fun profile on GeekWire? Drop us a line: tips@geekwire.com.
Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, introduces “Project Eluna,” an AI model that assists operations teams, during Amazon’s Delivering the Future event in Milpitas, Calif. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
SAN FRANCISCO — Amazon showed off its latest robotics and AI systems this week, presenting a vision of automation that it says will make warehouse and delivery work safer and smarter.
But the tech giant and some of the media at its Delivering the Future event were on different planets when it came to big questions about robots, jobs, and the future of human work.
The backdrop: On Tuesday, a day before the event, The New York Times cited internal Amazon documents and interviews to report that the company plans to automate as much as 75% of its operations by 2033. According to the report, the robotics team expects automation to “flatten Amazon’s hiring curve over the next 10 years,” allowing it to avoid hiring more than 600,000 workers even as sales continue to grow.
In a statement cited in the article, Amazon said the documents were incomplete and did not represent the company’s overall hiring strategy.
On stage at the event, Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, introduced the company’s newest systems — Blue Jay, a setup that coordinates multiple robotic arms to pick, stow, and consolidate items; and Project Eluna, an agentic AI model that acts as a digital assistant for operations teams.
Later, he addressed the reporters in the room: “When you write about Blue Jay or you write about Project Eluna … I hope you remember that the real headline is not about robots. The real headline is about people, and the future of work we’re building together.”
Amazon’s new “Blue Jay” robotic system uses multiple coordinated arms to pick, stow, and consolidate packages inside a fulfillment center — part of the company’s next generation of warehouse automation. (Amazon Photo)
He said the benefits for employees are clear: Blue Jay handles repetitive lifting, while Project Eluna helps identify safety issues before they happen. By automating routine tasks, he said, AI frees employees to focus on higher-value work, supported by Amazon training programs.
Brady coupled that message with a reminder that no company has created more U.S. jobs over the past decade than Amazon, noting its plan to hire 250,000 seasonal workers this year.
His message to the company’s front-line employees: “These systems are not experiments. They’re real tools built for you, to make your job safer, smarter, and more rewarding.”
‘Menial, mundane, and repetitive’
Later, during a press conference, a reporter cited the New York Times report, asking Brady if he believes Amazon’s workforce could shrink on the scale the paper described based on the internal report.
Brady didn’t answer the question directly, but described the premise as speculation, saying it’s impossible to predict what will happen a decade from now. He pointed instead to the past 10 years of Amazon’s robotics investments, saying the company has created hundreds of thousands of new jobs — including entirely new job types — while also improving safety.
He said Amazon’s focus is on augmenting workers, not replacing them, by designing machines that make jobs easier and safer. The company, he added, will continue using collaborative robotics to help achieve its broader mission of offering customers the widest selection at the lowest cost.
In an interview with GeekWire after the press conference, Brady said he sees the role of robotics as removing the “menial, mundane, and repetitive” tasks from warehouse jobs while amplifying what humans do best — reasoning, judgment, and common sense.
“Real leaders,” he added, “will lead with hope — hope that technology will do good for people.”
When asked whether the company’s goal was a “lights-out” warehouse with no people at all, Brady dismissed the idea. “There’s no such thing as 100 percent automation,” he said. “That doesn’t exist.”
Tye Brady, chief technologist for Amazon Robotics, speaks about the company’s latest warehouse automation and AI initiatives during the Delivering the Future event. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
Instead, he emphasized designing machines with real utility — ones that improve safety, increase efficiency, and create new types of technical jobs in the process.
When pressed on whether Amazon is replacing human hands with robotic ones, Brady pushed back: “People are much more than hands,” he said. “You perceive the environment. You understand the environment. You know when to put things together. Like, people got it going on. It’s not replacing a hand. That’s not the right way to think of it. It’s augmenting the human brain.”
Brady pointed to Amazon’s new Shreveport, La., fulfillment center as an example, saying the highly automated facility processes orders faster than previous generations while also adding about 2,500 new roles that didn’t exist before.
“That’s not a net job killer,” he said. “It’s creating more job efficiency — and more jobs in different pockets.”
The New York Times report offered a different view of Shreveport’s impact on employment. Describing it as Amazon’s “most advanced warehouse” and a “template for future robotic fulfillment centers,” the article said the facility uses about 1,000 robots.
Citing internal documents, the Times reported that automation allowed Amazon to employ about 25% fewer workers last year than it would have without the new systems. As more robots are added next year, it added, the company expects the site to need roughly half as many workers as it would for similar volumes of items under previous methods.
Wall Street sees big savings
Analysts, meanwhile, are taking the potential impact seriously. A Morgan Stanley research note published Wednesday — the same day as Amazon’s event and in direct response to the Times report — said the newspaper’s projections align with the investment bank’s baseline analysis.
Rather than dismissing the report as speculative, Morgan Stanley’s Brian Nowak treated the article’s data points as credible. The analysts wrote that Amazon’s reported plan to build around 40 next-generation robotic warehouses by 2027 was “in line with our estimated slope of robotics warehouse deployment.”
More notably, Morgan Stanley put a multi-billion-dollar price tag on the efficiency gains. Its previous models estimated the rollout could generate $2 billion to $4 billion in annual savings by 2027. But using the Times’ figure — that Amazon expects to “avoid hiring 160,000+ U.S. warehouse employees by ’27” — the analysts recalculated that the savings could reach as much as $10 billion per year.
Back at the event, the specific language used by Amazon executives aligned closely with details in the Times report about the company’s internal communications strategy.
According to the Times, internal documents advised employees to avoid terms such as “automation” and “A.I.” and instead use collaborative language like “advanced technology” and “cobots” — short for collaborative robots — as part of a broader effort to “control the narrative” around automation and hiring.
On stage, Brady’s remarks closely mirrored that approach. He consistently framed Amazon’s robotics strategy as one of augmentation, not replacement, describing new systems as tools built for people.
In the follow-up interview, Brady said he disliked the term “artificial intelligence” altogether, preferring to refer to the technology simply as “machines.”
“Intelligence is ours,” he said. “Intelligence is a very much a human thing.”
Almost every other tech brand is adopting AI into its apps and services. Now, the e-commerce giant Amazon has introduced a new AI feature designed to help buyers choose the right product. When you compare similar products on the Amazon app or website, the “Help Me Decide” button will recommend the best-suited product based on your purchase history and the product’s reviews.
Amazon’s new Help Me Decide button will simplify the shopping experience
The idea behind this new feature is to simplify decision-making while comparing or buying two or more similar products. For reference, if you are looking to buy a smartphone, the AI might notice your past search history, related product order history, and other information. Based on that, it could suggest a few particular smartphone models. Essentially, the tool studies what you’ve viewed or purchased before and uses that context to give a personalized recommendation.
Now, once you click on the “Help Me Decide” button, Amazon’s AI will recommend a product with a brief explanation of why it might suit you. Alongside the current option, you may also see a “budget pick” and an “upgrade pick” option. The former option will adjust the recommendation for affordable shoppers, while the latter is for those who prefer premium choices.
Amazon wants AI to shape the way its consumers shop
This isn’t the first time the e-commerce giant has integrated AI into its app or service. Amazon previously launched Rufus, an AI chatbot that guides customers through purchases, and a tool that automatically generates product buying guides. More recently, Amazon introduced Lens Live AI, which scans your surroundings using your phone’s camera and suggests matching items from its store.
Now, with the latest addition, the Help Me Decide tool, the company continues its push to make online shopping faster and more intuitive. For now, the feature is rolling out to millions of users across the US. It may be rolled out later to the users of other territories.
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