[News] Amazon Reportedly Launches Record 30,000 Job Cuts; Applied Materials Trims 4% of Staff

The wave of tech layoffs continues. With cost pressures mounting and AI reshaping corporate priorities, more companies across the industry are trimming staff. According to Reuters, citing sources, Amazon plans to cut up to 30,000 corporate jobs starting Tuesday to reduce costs and address overhiring during the pandemic. As cited by CNBC, data from Layoffs.fyi show that the planned cuts would be the largest in the tech industry since at least 2020.

As Reuters notes, this would be Amazon’s largest round of layoffs since late 2022, when the company cut about 27,000 jobs. While the figure represents only a small portion of Amazon’s 1.55 million total employees, it accounts for nearly 10% of its roughly 350,000 corporate staff, the report adds.

Sources cited by Reuters said the cuts may affect several divisions, including human resources, known internally as People Experience and Technology (PXT), as well as operations, devices, services, and Amazon Web Services.

Amid these job reductions, the report adds, AWS’s growth has slowed compared with competitors. According to Reuters, Amazon’s primary profit engine, its cloud computing arm AWS, generated second-quarter sales of $30.9 billion, up 17.5% year over year—well below the 39% growth posted by Microsoft’s Azure and 32% by Alphabet’s Google Cloud.

Amazon isn’t alone in trimming its workforce. As noted by CNBC, more than 200 tech companies have laid off roughly 98,000 employees since the start of the year. CNBC reports that Microsoft has cut about 15,000 jobs so far in 2025, while Meta last week eliminated around 600 positions in its artificial intelligence division. Google, meanwhile, let go of more than 100 design-related employees in its cloud unit earlier this month.

Applied Materials Cuts 4% of Workforce

Beyond cloud providers, chip equipment maker Applied Materials is cutting about 4% of its global workforce. The company began notifying affected employees worldwide last week “across all levels and groups,” according to a filing cited by CNBC.

CNBC notes that Applied Materials had about 36,100 full-time employees as of an August 2025 filing, meaning the reduction would affect roughly 1,400 workers. The layoffs come at the end of the company’s fiscal year. Earlier this month, according to CNBC, Applied Materials projected a $600 million decline in fiscal 2026 revenue following the U.S. expansion of its export restrictions.

Read more

• [News] Amazon Reportedly Cutting Jobs at AWS Greater China, Up to 30% of Staff Affected
• [News] Latest U.S. Export Curbs on Chinese Blacklisted Subsidiaries Could Cost Applied Materials $710M

(Photo credit: Amazon)