In his yearly message to stakeholders, Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy discussed the challenging year that the company endured. He addressed the choice to reduce costs and implement other measures to advance the platform's growth, resulting in the layoff of 27,000 workers.

Last month, Amazon executed its second round of layoffs, resulting in the termination of 9,000 employees. This came after the company's initial phase of job cuts, which saw 18,000 positions eliminated. Following the recent layoffs, Jassy communicated with the affected employees through a letter, asserting that the decision was made in the best interest of the company's long-term goals.

This marked the largest collective job cut in Amazon's history. Nevertheless, Jassy is optimistic about the future of the company, stating that its most promising days lie ahead. 

Amazon is providing affected employees with a separation package, transitional health insurance coverage, and assistance in finding new employment opportunities.

According to a report by Business Today, the CEO disclosed that Amazon needed to conduct a comprehensive analysis of each business and invention to determine whether they had the potential to generate sufficient revenue, operating income, free cash flow, and return on invested capital in the long run.

He went on to mention that Amazon had to close various physical stores and businesses, as well as discontinue the Amazon Fabric and Amazon Care initiatives, in order to reduce costs.

“There are a number of other changes that we’ve made over the last several months to streamline our overall costs, and like most leadership teams, we’ll continue to evaluate what we’re seeing in our business and proceed adaptively,” Jassy wrote in his recent letter. 

In addition, he declared that starting in May, employees will be required to report to the office for a minimum of three days per week.

During his address, the CEO discussed Amazon's significant investment in AI technology, which has gained widespread popularity in recent months. The company is actively developing its own Large Language Models (LLMs), as Jassy stated, "We have been working on our own LLMs for some time now, and we are confident that they will revolutionise and enhance virtually every customer experience. As such, we will continue to make significant investments in these models across all our consumer, seller, brand, and creator experiences."