Profits Soar, 14,000 Fired: Amazon’s Conflicting Q3 Signals

Amazon sent conflicting signals to the market this week, announcing a blockbuster quarter that crushed profit estimates while simultaneously confirming 14,000 corporate layoffs. The company’s stock jumped 9% as investors focused on the strong financials.
The tech giant’s $1.95 earnings per share was well above the $1.58 expected, on revenue of $180.17bn. This was driven by a 20% revenue spike in its AWS cloud division, which hit $33bn.
The AWS growth is its fastest since 2022 and comes despite a recent, widespread outage. The division’s resilience highlights its “too big to fail” status in the tech world.
Regarding the layoffs, CEO Andy Jassy told investors the decision was “not really financially driven” or “even really AI-driven.” He claimed it was a “culture” move to foster a “startup-style” mentality.
This explanation contradicts a company blog post that did reference AI’s transformative nature. Jassy himself has previously stated that AI will reduce the need for people in certain roles.