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- Ep 643: Amazon Cuts 30,000 jobs in AI push. What this means for the the U.S. economy.
Ep 643: Amazon Cuts 30,000 jobs in AI push. What this means for the the U.S. economy.
Inside Amazon's 30K job cuts due to AI, OpenAIās $1 trillion IPO, Fed Chair says no to AI bubble, Geminiās huge user jump and more.
Everyday AI
October 30, 2025
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Sup yāall š
Amazon axed 14K jobs because of AI, and that total will be 30K soon. It seems Big Tech has rewritten the Corporate Playbook on how human work is (or isnāt) valued.
(More on that below, and make sure to check todayās show.)
But thatās got me thinkingā¦.
The elephant in the room question Iāve never asked: Do you think your job is at risk due to AI?
Might your job be at risk due to AI?š³ļø Vote to see LIVE results š³ļø |
See ya tomorrow,
āļø
Jordan
Outsmart The Future
Today in Everyday AI
7 minute read
š Daily Podcast Episode: Amazon is cutting 30,000 jobs because of AI. Why? Well, the writing was on the wall. And it has HUGE implications. Give todayās show a watch/read/listen.
šµļøāāļø Fresh Finds: NotebookLM will get Sheets soon, OpenAI rolls our Character Cameos in Sora, Cursor drops V2 and more. Read on for Fresh Finds.
š Byte Sized Daily AI News: OpenAIās $1 trillion IPO, Fed Chair says no to AI bubble, Geminiās huge user jump and more. Read on for Byte Sized News.
šŖ Leverage AI: These Amazon AI job cuts impact you, too. We lay out why and what to do about it. Keep reading for that!
ā©ļø Donāt miss out: Did you miss our last newsletter? We covered: Claude's killer secret feature, OpenAI makes AGI projection, GitHub unveils Agent HQ, 75% of enterprise leaders see ROI on AI and more. Check it here!
Ep 643: Amazon Cuts 30,000 jobs in AI push. What this means for the the U.S. economy.
In an AI push, Amazon has already axed 14,000 jobs and that total is reportedly going to hit 30,000. šŖ
Is this because Amazon overhired during the pandemic?
Or, is this a sign that AI is now capable enough that most enterprises will cut thousands of jobs.
Tune in as we discuss.
Also on the pod today:
ā¢ Middle management wiped out š¢
ā¢ Opex to Capex shift šø
ā¢ Corporate blueprint: fewer heads more AI š„
Itāll be worth your 39 minutes:
Listen on our site:
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Hereās our favorite AI finds from across the web:
New AI Tool Spotlight ā Cursor released V2 of its platform, Codebanana promises Google Docs-esque collaborative AI coding, Peakflo released human-like AI voice agents.
Legal AI ā Perplexity just launched a patent research tool.
Today weāre launching Perplexity Patents, the worldās first AI patent research agent that makes IP intelligence accessible to everyone.
Read more about Perplexity Patents in our latest blog:
perplexity.ai/hub/blog/introā¦
ā Perplexity (@perplexity_ai)
12:37 PM ā¢ Oct 30, 2025
Big Tech AI Battle ā Microsoft and Google are taking two very different approaches to enterprise AI. Who will win? The Economist takes a deeper look.
ChatGPT Features ā OpenAI released Pulse for the web.
AI Layoffs ā AI layoff season is apparently in full swing. What are companies gaining from these AI layoffs?
AI in Education ā What happened when a professor let just half of his students use AI?
AI Coding Models ā Cognitionās new SWE-1.5 model in Windsurf packs near-top coding accuracy into a model served at blistering speeds (up to 950 tok/s), aiming to keep developers in flow by cutting response times to under five seconds.
NotebookLM Updates ā Google confirmed that Sheets support is coming to NotebookLM soon.
Coming very soon š
ā NotebookLM (@NotebookLM)
5:38 PM ā¢ Oct 28, 2025
AI Search ā Forbes lays out advice at showing up more frequently in AI search.
AI Cloud ā CoreWeave acquires Marimo to embed its open-source marimo notebook into CoreWeaveās GPU cloud
Sora AI Video ā OpenAIās Sora now lets you turn pets, toys, or illustrations into reusable ācharacter cameosā
1. OpenAI mulls massive IPO as revenue surges šø
According to Reuters, OpenAI is preparing for a potential IPO that could value the company as high as $1 trillion, with filing discussions as early as late 2026 and a possible 2027 listing.
The company expects an annualized revenue run rate near $20 billion by year-end but is also running mounting losses, and the new corporate restructure gives the nonprofit OpenAI Foundation a sizable stake. If public, OpenAI would gain faster access to capital for massive AI infrastructure and acquisitions, which could accelerate product rollouts and partnership opportunities that matter to startups and career builders seeking AI integrations.
2. Powell: AI surge not another dotcom bubble š«§
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that the current AI boom looks fundamentally different from the late 1990s dotcom craze because todayās biggest players largely generate real earnings and drive tangible investment in data centers and chips, not just speculative valuations, according to CNBC/Reuters coverage.
He acknowledged that some high-value AI startups still burn cash while big chipmaker Nvidia has soared past $5 trillion in market cap thanks to GPUs powering large models.
3. Gemini app tops 650M monthly users as Google posts record quarter š
Alphabet said the standalone Gemini app now exceeds 650 million monthly active users, a sharp rise from 350 million in March and just 90 million in October 2024, underscoring rapid adoption ahead of Gemini 3ās planned release later this year.
The growth has been driven in part by features like Nano Banana image generation and AI Mode, which reached 100 million users in July and still sees 75 million daily users after wider rollout. Alphabet also reported over 300 million paid subscriptions across Google One and YouTube Premium and delivered its first-ever $100 billion quarter, signaling strong consumer demand for AI-driven services.
4. NotebookLM gets a serious brain upgrade š§
According to the NotebookLM announcement, the tool now uses Gemini models to unlock a full 1 million token context window, six times more multiāturn memory, and a 50% improvement in response quality for multiāsource answers, making it far better at analyzing large document collections. Conversations are now automatically saved (with deletion options and privacy in shared notebooks), so long projects can be paused and resumed without losing context.
Users can also set persistent chat goals and tonesāanything from a PhD advisor to a marketing strategistāso responses align with specific workflows and career needs.
5. Metaās AI splurge wipes out $237B in market value š„
Metaās stock plunged after the company raised the midpoint of its capital-spending forecast for the third time this year, sparking analyst concerns that its ārunawayā AI investments may not deliver proportional financial returns.
The market reaction erased roughly $237 billion in market cap as investors questioned whether heavy spending on nextāgen AI infrastructure and initiatives will translate into sustainable profits.
š¦¾How You Can Leverage:
Amazon just axed 14,000 jobs because of AI. šŖ
There's more on the way. (30,000 in total)
Big yikes. But it gets worse.
The worst part?
Amazon's not alone. Over the past few quarters, their Big Tech brethren have been chopping Opex and investing in Capex.
These moves, including Amazon's 30K headcount reduction, are legit rewriting the rules of Corporate America, which now read like a cold, hard blueprint. Proper AI implementation leads to humans losing their jobs because AI is better.
So what are we all to do?
And what can we learn from Amazon's job cuts and refocusing on AI?
Don't worry shorties. That's why we tackled the sticky issue on today's Everyday AI show. Make sure to peep it as we unpack the behind-the-scenes moves at Amazon that led to these massive cuts, and how your company can learn from them.
But nowā¦. The big 3 takeaways.
Let's dive in.
1 ā Amazon's Targeting Middle Management First š„
Amazon's cutting 30,000 corporate roles by next year. Not warehouse workers or blue collar jobs.
White collar knowledge workers sitting in boardrooms. Middle management coordination roles that AI now handles better than humans.
To their credit (we guess?) Amazon was pretty blunt in admitted that with AI efficiencies, these roles werenāt needed.
Case in point:
Their own Amazon Q saved the equivalent of 4,500 developer years in just 12 months by automating Java application upgrades that took humans 50 days on average.
Yeah. Years.
That single internal use case proved AI could eliminate thousands of positions while maintaining the same output quality. The ROI data justified these massive cuts immediately.
Amazon's PXT department got hit hardest. That's their people experience and technology group, basically HR.
They faced 15% cuts while overall reductions were only 4% of the workforce. That's surgical targeting of administrative coordination and support layers that collect updates, synthesize information, and manage communication flows.
Essentially if your job is attending meetings and creating PowerPoints, you're in trouble.
Try This
Document every workflow in your department that requires concentration but not creativity. If AI can do it with the same accuracy, automate it immediately.
Build a ratio: hours spent creating value versus coordinating information. If coordination exceeds 50%, pivot toward specialized technical work or roles requiring physical presence right now.
2 ā Big Tech's Rewriting the Corporate Playbook ā”
Satya Nadella, Microsoft's CEO, cut 15,000 roles over the past few months. Copilot now writes approximately 30% of their code in development projects.
Marc Benioff, Salesforce's CEO, reduced customer support staff by 44% in a year. Their Agentforce AI reportedly handles about 50% of customer interactions now.
Benioff pretty much said "I need less heads" during earnings discussions. Wall Street rewarded him with stock increases because they love this trade.
Meta cut 600 AI roles last week to consolidate operations. Google eliminated hundreds in April and another 100 this month. IBM replaced hundreds of HR employees with AI agents handling administrative tasks. Accenture started cutting 11,000 roles for AI service realignment.
You see this troubling pattern?
Cut thousands of coordination and middle management roles. Invest billions in data centers and AI infrastructure. Watch your stock price soar.
They're swapping OPEX for CAPEX because no one knows yet exactly what new human jobs AI will actually create. So companies are hedging by investing in infrastructure and eliminating roles that AI already dominates.
This is the new MBA case study being written in real-time: properly implement GenAI then cut jobs relentlessly.
Try This
Pull your company's most recent earnings call transcript right now. Search for "AI investment" and "headcount optimization" phrases.
That ratio tells you what's coming to your department in six months. Position yourself in roles generating measurable revenue or requiring physical presence before the cuts arrive.
3 ā Unlearn Your Way of Working or Get Left Behind š
The skills that made you successful are becoming obsolete, and that's a wild thing to accept.
What worked five or ten years ago doesn't work in an AI-native organization. You gotta unlearn your old ways before adapting to what's next.
Everyone talks about upskilling. Wrong. You need to unlearn first.
The coordination work and synthesis tasks that built your career? AI does them better now. (Sorry not sorry.)
Augment everything with AI immediately. But don't just bank the extra time and productivity gains because that's short-lived thinking.
Use those efficiency gains to create new revenue streams for your company or build future-proof skillsets that AI can't replicate. Shift away from being a single-category generalist because those roles are getting eliminated first.
Focus on work requiring physical presence. Go see customers in the field. Create in-person activations.
AI can't shake hands or read a room or activate customers in person. That gap is your competitive advantage, even if itās a space your company or team doesnāt usually operate in.
Create human connection in an AI-everywhere world. Cuz AI fatigue on consumers is real and itāll hit hard.
Zig toward connection while everyone else zags toward automation because there's gonna be a backlash when people get sick of AI workslop.
Try This
Audit your role honestly. If coordination exceeds creation, you could be in danger when this blueprint hits your organization.
Pick one revenue-generating initiative for your team this quarter. Make yourself physically essential with in-person client visits or field activations starting Monday.
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