SEATTLE, WASHINGTON — Amazon has reaffirmed its ambition to dramatically improve its technological efforts in its U.S. operations, according to leaked information by The New York Times.
The NYT report states that the company’s robotics team is planning to automate 75% of Amazon’s operations. This would allow the company to avoid hiring 160,000 people needed by 2027, which is expected to amount to 600,000 warehouse and fulfillment roles replaced with robots by 2033.
The development is presumed to be a strategic move, as it is expected to save the company 30 cents per item, resulting in $12.6 billion in savings from 2025 to 2027.
While the leaked report paints this decision in a negative light, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said it misrepresents the company’s overall hiring strategy.
Leaked documents often paint an incomplete and misleading picture of our plans, and that’s the case here. In our written narrative culture, thousands of documents circulate throughout the company at any given time, each with varying degrees of accuracy and timeliness. We’re actively hiring at operations facilities across the country and recently announced plans to fill 250,000 positions for the holiday season.
“Robots Aren’t Taking Jobs”
Robotics and automation are nothing new to Amazon, which remains at the forefront of technological advancements. In fact, its robotics arm was established more than a decade ago and has since deployed and produced more than a million robots.
Amazon Robotics’s goal within the company’s operations was always simple: Pair employees with the right technology to make their workday safer, easier, and more productive, while delivering packages to customers faster than ever.
In one of its blogs, Amazon introduced Blue Jay and Project Eluna, the company’s latest robotics for its operations.
- Blue Jay: A robot that works as an extra set of hands, helping employees with tasks involving reaching and lifting.
- Project Eluna: An agentic AI system that acts like an extra teammate, reducing cognitive load while reducing bottlenecks.
Amazon Robotics’s chief technologist, Tye Brady, reiterates that this development is all about the people and the future of work Amazon is building. The impact of this robotics development isn’t to reduce hiring, but to enhance the company’s efficiency.
We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. 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.
— Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO
