Amazon's AGI department has laid off 16,000 people, with cuts made in January this year

According to Reuters, Amazon conducted layoffs in its Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) department on July 22, marking a new round of smaller-scale adjustments following the company's reduction of 16,000 employees in January of this year. A company spokesperson stated in response to Reuters' inquiry that AGI remains one of the company's most important directions, but it had to make the "difficult decision" to eliminate certain positions to focus on customer priority projects.

The layoffs involve the teams overseen by AGI Data Services Vice President Adeeb Shanaa and AGI Information Vice President Vishal Sharma, with specific details on the scale of the cuts not yet disclosed. Previously, Amazon AGI head Rohit Prasad left at the end of last year, and AGI Lab head David Luan departed in February of this year. AGI-related operations were integrated under Senior Vice President Peter DeSantis in December of last year, along with departments such as chip development and quantum computing.