Logo of e-commerce major Amazon.
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Amazon appeared to have prematurely alerted Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud-computing employees to layoffs planned for Wednesday morning by sending a commiseration email and team-wide meeting invitation hours early on Tuesday.
The e-commerce major, which cut some 14,000 white-collar jobs in October 2025, is planning a second round of layoffs this week, with a larger aim of reducing its corporate workforce by about 30,000. But the company has not yet informed impacted employees, nor has it confirmed the layoff plan.
The email sent on Tuesday signed by Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at AWS, wrongly said that impacted employees in the US, Canada and Costa Rica had already been informed they lost their jobs, according to a Reuters report.
In Slack messages viewed by Reuters, AWS employees who received the email said the Wednesday meeting was almost immediately canceled. Amazon referred in the email to the layoffs as "Project Dawn".
"Changes like this are hard on everyone," Aubrey wrote in the email. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organisation and AWS for future success."
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, reported Reuters.
Employees in AWS, retail, Prime Video, and the People Experience and Technology HR units are expected to be affected, though the full scope of this week's cuts was unclear.
On Tuesday, Amazon cut jobs in its Fresh grocery and Go market divisions as it plans to close existing brick-and-mortar stores and convert some of them to Whole Foods stores. It did not disclose the number of affected employees.
The size of the cuts to be announced on Wednesday remained unclear. The full 30,000 jobs flagged in October would represent a small portion of Amazon’s 1.58 million employees, but nearly 10 per cent of the firm’s corporate workforce.
Amazon, in an October blog post, tied those job cuts to the increased use of artificial intelligence. That post from the head of human resources, Beth Galetti, indicated more job cuts were likely in the future.
(With Reuters inputs)