Amazon to lay off thousands more while Autodesk confirms 1,000 jobs to go

Amazon reported to be shedding tens of thousands while Autodesk is reducing its sales force

Amazon is lining up another wave of job cuts next week, according to reports, while Autodesk has confirmed 1,000 roles are to go in sales-related redundancies.

Sources told Reuters that Amazon plans a new round of job cuts next week, with the scale of layoffs expected to be similar to the previous wave in October, which saw 14,000 white-collar roles removed.

If the report is accurate, it would mark a significant step towards Amazon’s goal of reducing its global workforce by around 30,000 people.

CEO Andy Jassy is not relating the reductions to AI, insisting a leaner workforce can mean more innovation. “You end up with a lot more people than what you had before, and you end up with a lot more layers," Jassy said during an earnings call.

Autodesk cuts 7% of employees

US design software firm Autodesk has announced plans to cut around 7% of its global workforce, affecting roughly 1,000 employees, as it redirects spending towards AI and cloud-based services.

The San Francisco-based company said most of the job losses would fall on customer-facing sales teams, as it completes what it describes as the final phase of a multi-year overhaul of its sales and marketing operations.

Autodesk, whose software is widely used in architecture, construction, manufacturing and entertainment, including film and video game production, said the restructuring would help streamline customer engagement and support long-term growth.

The announcement was welcomed by investors, with shares rising more than 3% in early trading on Thursday. The stock had fallen about 13% so far this year, after ending 2025 broadly flat.

As of January last year, Autodesk employed around 15,300 people worldwide.

The company has been moving away from a traditional, channel-based sales model towards subscriptions and usage-based pricing, a shift it says allows for closer customer relationships and greater control over pricing.

Despite the cost of the restructuring, Autodesk said it now expects billings, revenue, adjusted operating margins and free cash flow for both the fourth quarter and the full 2026 financial year to exceed the upper end of its previous forecasts.

It estimates pre-tax restructuring charges of between $135m and $160m related to the cuts, largely covering severance and employee benefits.

Most of those costs will be paid during the 2027 financial year. A further $90m to $110m in charges is expected in the current quarter, which ends on 31st January.

Some of the savings generated will be reinvested into what the company called "key strategic priorities", including AI and cloud services, over the next financial year.

Autodesk said it expects the restructuring programme to be completed by the end of fiscal 2027.

Chief executive Andrew Anagnost said the move concludes a process that began last year, when the company eliminated around 1,350 roles as part of an earlier reorganisation.

He added that the cuts were not intended to become a regular occurrence and were "not driven by the external environment or an effort to replace people with AI".

"We remain steadfast in our belief that technology is only as powerful as the people who use it," he wrote in a letter to staff.

Tech job losses continue

Autodesk competes with firms such as Adobe and PTC, and its announcement comes amid a wider wave of job losses across the technology sector.

More than 114,000 tech jobs were cut across 237 companies in 2025, according to the tracking website Layoffs.fyi.

A recent survey by the consultancy BearingPoint found that around half of executives believe their organisations have between 10% and 19% excess capacity as AI-driven automation is rolled out.

Major firms including Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta have all reduced headcounts while increasing spending on AI.

Other large employers have made similar moves.

HP said in November it would cut up to 6,000 jobs globally by 2028, while Salesforce confirmed in September that it had reduced its customer support workforce by nearly half as AI tools took on a larger share of customer interactions.

Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff said that about half of customer conversations at the company are now handled by AI agents, arguing that service quality has not suffered despite the reductions.