Seattle is looking to celebrate and accelerate its leadership in artificial intelligence at the very moment the first wave of the AI economy is crashing down on the region’s tech workforce.

That contrast was hard to miss Monday evening at the opening reception for Seattle AI Week 2025 at Pier 70. On stage, panels offered a healthy dose of optimism about building the AI future. In the crowd, buzz about Amazon’s impending layoffs brought the reality of the moment back to earth.

A region that rose with Microsoft and then Amazon is now dealing with the consequences of Big Tech’s AI-era restructuring. Companies that hired by the thousands are now thinning their ranks in the name of efficiency and focus — a dose of corporate realism for the local tech economy.

The double-edged nature of this shift is not lost on Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson.

“AI, and the future of AI, and what that means for our state and the world — each day I do this job, the more that moves up in my mind in terms of the challenges and the opportunities we have,” Ferguson told the AI Week crowd. He touted Washington’s concentration of AI jobs, saying his goal is to maximize the benefits of AI while minimizing its downsides.

Seattle AI Week, led by the Washington Technology Industry Association, was started last year after a Forbes list of the nation’s top 50 AI startups included none from Seattle, said the WTIA’s Nick Ellingson, opening this year’s event. That didn’t seem right. Was it a messaging problem?

“A bunch of us got together and said, let’s talk about all the cool things happening around AI in Seattle, and let’s expand the tent beyond just tech things that are happening,” Ellingson explained.

So maybe that’s the best measuring stick: how many startups will this latest shakeout spark, and how can the Seattle region’s startup and tech leaders make it happen? Can the region become less dependent on the whims of the Microsoft and Amazon C-suites in the process? 

“Washington has so much opportunity. It’s one of the few capitals of AI in the world,” said WTIA’s Arry Yu in her opening remarks. “People talk about China, people talk about Silicon Valley — there are a few contenders, but really, it’s here in Seattle. … The future is built on data, on powerful technology, but also on community. That’s what makes this place different.”

And yet, “AI is a sleepy scene in Seattle, where people work at their companies, but there’s very little activity and cross-pollinating outside of this,” said Nathan Lambert, senior research scientist with the Allen Institute for AI, during the opening panel discussion.

No, we don’t want to become San Francisco or Silicon Valley, Lambert added. But that doesn’t mean the region can’t cherry-pick some of the ingredients that put Bay Area tech on top.

Whether laid-off tech workers will start their own companies is a common question after layoffs like this. In the Seattle region at least, that outcome has been more fantasy than reality. 

This is where AI could change things, if not with the fabled one-person unicorn then with a bigger wave of new companies born of this employment downturn. Who knows, maybe one will even land on that elusive Forbes AI 50 list. (Hey, a region can dream!)

But as the new AI reality unfolds in the regional workforce, maybe the best question to ask is whether Seattle’s next big thing can come from its own backyard again.

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.

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 the cutbacks are expected to continue 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. Amazon needs “to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and more ownership, to move as quickly as possible for our customers and business,” she explained.

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.

Although the cuts are expected to be global, they are likely to hit especially hard in the Seattle region, home to the company’s first headquarters and its largest corporate workforce. The tech hub has already felt the impact of major layoffs by Microsoft and many other companies in recent months.

The cuts come two days before Amazon’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. 

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.

Amazon could be planning to cut up to 30,000 corporate positions starting on Tuesday.

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.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also hinted at potential workforce impact from generative AI earlier this year in a memo to employees that was shared publicly.

“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.

By Pavel Shynkarenko

After the 2024-25 job cuts at Google, Amazon and other tech companies, the second wave of tech layoffs is rewriting the startup labor market.

Skilled professionals are suddenly available, creating both opportunity and pressure for founders and workers alike. Startups now compete for talent that once seemed untouchable, while employees face longer job hunts and rethink how and where they work.

Higher expectations, more side gigs

With talent flooding the market, candidates are demanding more flexibility and clearer growth paths, even as many accept contract work or lower pay to stay employed. The typical job search now stretches six to seven months, even longer for those needing visas or relocation. That uncertainty has fueled a surge in freelancing and side projects.

Bankrate reports that 36% of American adults now have a side gig, with more than half of them having started in the past two years. While many professionals didn’t plan to freelance, they turned to it because they had no other choice. For some, it has proved liberating, with confidence and job satisfaction rising compared with corporate roles, according to our internal data.

Despite all the buzz in the media and even on Reddit, overemployment — the trend of holding two jobs — remains a niche phenomenon, affecting roughly 5% of workers, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The more common pattern is a mix of contract work and short-term projects, which gives startups a chance to hire A-level talent for fractional roles they couldn’t have afforded before.

Smaller, sharper teams

Payroll is every startup’s biggest cost, and founders are trimming teams while raising output per employee. The examples are striking. Midjourney reports about $200 million in ARR with a staff of only 11.

Cursor has reached roughly $100 million with 15-20 people. Data from Carta shows that the average seed-stage team in the consumer and fintech sectors has declined by nearly half since 2022.

This lean approach is spreading beyond early-stage ventures. Around 90% of tech executives say they are open to hiring freelancers during peak workloads; more than 28% already integrate them into daily operations. As this makes clear, smaller core teams, supplemented by trusted project-based workers, can move faster and spend less.

Opportunity on both sides

For workers, the takeaway is that startups may now be the safer bet. Mid-sized firms that once promised stability are cutting jobs, while startups are candid about their risks and can reward performance with equity or future roles. A short contract can become a long-term stake.

On the other hand, for founders, today’s market is a chance to recruit top engineers, designers and operators at terms that were impossible two years ago. It also demands a new mindset involving compensation flexibility, project-based roles and hiring processes built for speed.

All in all, the second wave of layoffs has changed expectations and shifted supply and demand in the job market. Workers are blending traditional jobs with side gigs, and startups are proving that small, focused teams can out-execute much larger competitors.

On both sides, adaptability is now the ultimate advantage; companies that remain nimble will win.

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Pavel Shynkarenko, founder and CEO of Mellow, is an entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience, and a freelance economy pioneer who aims to transform how companies engage with contractors. In 2014, Shynkarenko launched his first HR tech company, Solar Staff, a fintech payroll company for freelancers, which showed $10 million-plus in revenue for 2022 and 2023. In early 2024, responding to the growing demand for specialized solutions for long-term interaction with contractors, Solar Staff, as a global company, pivoted to Mellow ($1 million MRR).

Related reading:

• The Crunchbase Tech Layoffs Tracker
• Data: Tech Layoffs Remain Stubbornly High, With Big Tech Leading The Way
• More Layoffs Are Coming. Here Are Hard-Earned Lessons From A Former CEO Who’s Been There On Doing RIFs The Right Way

Illustration: Dom Guzman

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024.