Amazon to cut hundreds of jobs at its streaming and studio units

Amazon.com will lay off several hundred employees in its streaming and studio operations, it said in an internal note on Wednesday as companies extend their huge job cuts over the past two years into 2024.

The staff facing exit at Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios in the Americas will be informed on Wednesday and in most other regions by the end of the week.

The online retail behemoth last year cut more than 27,000 jobs as part of a wave of US tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily during the pandemic.

“We’ve identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact,” Mike Hopkins, senior vice-president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, told employees in a note seen by Reuters.

The company has spent aggressively in recent years to bolster its media business, including the $8.5bn deal for MGM and about $465m on the first season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video in 2022.

It is also set to roll out ads on Prime Video as well as a more expensive ad-free subscription tier in some market, similar to moves by rivals Netflix and Walt Disney.

After widespread job cuts in 2022 and 2023, many companies are now targeting select projects and divisions as they reprioritise their resources.

Amazon recently cut some jobs at its Alexa voice assistant division, while Microsoft removed some staff at its LinkedIn professional network.

Amazon’s Twitch service is set to lay off 500 employees, or about 35% of its workforce, according to a media report on Tuesday.

Its shares, which surged more than 80% last year, were up 1.5% in afternoon trading.

Reuters