Amazon to lay off several hundred employees at Prime Video, Studios

Amazon.com has announced plans to terminate several hundred employees in its streaming and studio divisions, including Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. The decision was communicated through an internal note on Wednesday and follows on from the significant job cuts the online retail giant has been executing for the past two years.

Those affected in the Americas will be notified on Wednesday, with those in other regions being informed by the end of the week. This move is in line with Amazon's previous downsizing efforts, having eliminated over 27,000 positions last year during a significant wave of layoffs within the US tech industry post-pandemic.

The senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, Mike Hopkins, stated in a note that the company identified opportunities to decrease or discontinue investments in certain areas, while escalating their focus on content and product initiatives that have the most substantial impact.

Amazon has been notably assertive with its media business investments in recent years, with notable expenditures including the acquisition of MGM for $8.5 billion and approximately $465 million spent on the first season of "The Lord of The Rings: The Rings of Power" on Prime Video in 2022.

The online retail giant is also preparing to introduce ads on Prime Video and a costlier ad-free subscription tier in some markets, paralleling the strategies of competitors like Netflix and Walt Disney.

Numerous companies that implemented considerable layoffs in 2022 and 2023 are now selectively targeting specific projects and divisions to better manage their resources. Amazon recently made cuts in its Alexa voice assistant division, while Microsoft made layoffs in its LinkedIn professional network.

In addition, Amazon's Twitch service is expected to terminate 500 of its employees, representing around 35% of its workforce, according to a report published on Tuesday.

Despite these organisational shifts, Amazon's shares, which escalated by more than 80% last year, were up by 1.5% in afternoon trading.

With inputs from Reuters