Amazon CEO Andy Jassy weighed in on Block’s massive layoffs but kept his distance from the specifics—saying he hadn’t “really digested” the news about Jack Dorsey slashing nearly half his workforce. But while Jassy sidestepped the Block situation, he didn’t hold back on the broader reality: AI is going to shrink the number of humans needed to do a whole lot of jobs, and new roles will eventually fill the gap—just like every other tech shift before this one.Speaking to CNBC, Jassy said every company would make its own call on headcount in the AI era. “I do believe that a lot of the jobs that we’ve thrown human beings at for the last 20 or 30 years, you won’t need as many human beings doing those same jobs,” Jassy said. “But I also think there will be other jobs created. And that has always happened in every technology shift.”His comments came a day after Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced plans to cut around 4,000 employees—bringing the fintech company’s headcount from over 10,000 down to roughly 6,000. Dorsey was blunt about the reason: AI tools have changed what it means to build and run a company, he told shareholders. Block’s stock jumped over 20% on the back of the announcement.
Jack Dorsey’s AI bet rattles the tech workforce—and Wall Street loves it
Jassy, for his part, has been saying the quiet part out loud for months. In a June 2025 memo to Amazon employees, he wrote that generative AI and agents would “change the way our work is done” and that the company expected its corporate workforce to shrink as efficiency gains kicked in. That memo sparked immediate backlash, with multiple internal Slack channels lighting up with employee criticism.The Amazon chief struck a more measured tone on Friday, framing the shift as a “transition” rather than a collapse. He pointed to cloud solutions architects—a role that didn’t exist 15 years ago but now employs tens of thousands globally—as proof that new tech creates new work.
AI job losses are no longer hypothetical—the numbers are starting to add up
Still, the scale of cuts is hard to ignore. Goldman Sachs estimated earlier this month that AI had already driven 5,000 to 10,000 net monthly job losses in 2025. Salesforce trimmed about 4,000 roles last year, with CEO Marc Benioff saying he simply “needs less heads.” And a November MIT study found AI could already replace close to 12% of the US workforce.“We’ll all work through it together,” Jassy said. Whether that’s reassurance or just corporate optimism, the layoff numbers will do the talking.
