Amazon closes San Francisco AI lab as 1,100 Florida warehouse jobs are cut

AI lab closure

Amazon has closed its San Francisco artificial intelligence lab, a unit that had been pursuing artificial general intelligence. The closure affects parts of the company’s AGI organization as Amazon says it is concentrating its work on artificial intelligence initiatives it considers most important for customers.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company has built large AI models for several years and continues to view the work as important. The spokesperson linked the role eliminations within parts of the AGI organization to a sharper focus on selected AI priorities.

The lab’s team had reached around 80 people at its peak, although dozens had already departed, according to reporting cited by the San Francisco Chronicle. Amazon said affected employees will receive 90 days of pay and job-search assistance. At the time of the report, the company had not filed a layoff notice with California officials.

Florida warehouse reductions

Separately, Amazon said it would lay off 1,100 warehouse workers in Florida during a renovation project. State filings listed 616 workers in Homestead, near Miami, and 494 workers in Port St. Lucie.

Amazon plans to renovate the two facilities over the next two years. Treasure Coast Palm reported that the new Port St. Lucie location is expected to employ 850 to 1,000 workers after reopening around 2028.

The warehouse reductions are therefore associated with the Florida facility work, rather than the company’s stated AI-focused restructuring of parts of its AGI organization.

Wider workforce changes

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that Amazon cut 16,000 jobs in January and 14,000 jobs in October, amounting to roughly 10% of its office workforce. Amazon said in January that those earlier reductions were intended to reduce management layers and bureaucracy.

A later report dated October 8 described another round of cuts across several Amazon teams. That report said fewer than 1,000 people were affected and cited an Amazon spokesperson who confirmed a small number of eliminations, primarily in the Stores business. It described reported impacts in customer service, marketplace support and engineering roles in Amazon’s retail business, as well as in India and the UK.

The October report said the latest reductions followed roughly 30,000 job eliminations late last year and early this year, a figure that differs in framing from the San Francisco Chronicle’s account of 16,000 jobs in January and 14,000 jobs in October. Amazon attributed the Stores changes to adjustments intended to support its priorities, while the report also described the company’s planned record $220 billion spending on data centers, chips and other AI infrastructure.

Amazon remains a significant Bay Area employer. As of April, it leased 741,000 square feet of office space in San Francisco, making it the city’s seventh-biggest office tenant, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Sources

• Amazon closes SF AI lab, lays off 1,100 Florida warehouse workers
• Amazon employees hit by fresh job cuts across several teams – DNYUZ