Amazon unveils latest warehouse robot as tech giants do AI layoffs

Amazon has unveiled its newest warehouse robotic that may take instructions in conversational language, underscoring how AI-powered automation is advancing as firms proceed to slash their company workforce in AI-driven efficiencies.

The tech large’s next-generation Proteus is an autonomous cell robotic, which is designed to know pure language instructions from staff and transport gadgets in warehouses. It was launched on the firm’s Delivering the Future occasion in London on Thursday.

The unique Proteus was first deployed in Amazon achievement facilities in 2022 to help staff, together with transporting heavy carts weighing as much as 400 kilograms. It is at present utilized in 25 achievement facilities within the U.S., with the most recent model of the robotic set to be rolled out in Europe within the first half of 2027.

Employees will be capable to direct the brand new Proteus in plain language, with out technical instructions or a programming interface. It is a part of a broader push to increase the know-how in Europe, with Amazon additionally committing to investing 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion) to modernize achievement operations within the area over the following few years.

Different robotics developments embody its first robotic with a way of contact, Vulcan, and a robotic tote dealing with system referred to as STARK.

The announcement comes as Amazon continues to push forward with layoffs, together with cutting 14,000 corporate workers in October, citing plans to additional invest in its “biggest bets,” which embody AI. It mentioned it is laying off a further 16,000 workers in January to scale back layers and paperwork.

CEO Andy Jassy informed employees final 12 months that AI will end in a shrinking of Amazon’s workforce over the approaching years.

“We are going to want fewer folks doing a number of the jobs which can be being performed right now, and extra folks doing different kinds of jobs,” Jassy said in a memo to employees. “It is arduous to know precisely the place this nets out over time, however within the subsequent few years, we count on that this can cut back our complete company workforce.”

A number of tech giants, together with Microsoft, Salesforce, and IBM, have been behind hundreds of AI layoffs in 2025, with the know-how answerable for over 50,000 layoffs in the U.S. through the 12 months. Extra just lately, Block, Oracle, and Meta have been among the many corporations finishing up job cuts.

“Since we have invested in robotics, we have created a whole lot of hundreds of jobs,” Tye Brady, chief technologist at Amazon Robotics informed CNBC on Thursday.

Investments in folks, upskilling, and good machines create jobs, Brady mentioned, including that Amazon is creating jobs at a scale not seen within the U.S. up to now 10 years.

Amazon’s Vice President, Nation Supervisor for the U.Ok. and Eire, John Boumphrey, informed CNBC that its robotics funding truly requires it to rent extra staff inside achievement facilities, with the corporate struggling to rent folks with the suitable expertise.

“I’d place a big wager that we will want an terrible lot of individuals in our warehouse sooner or later… we make use of extra folks in the identical house, so truly, our expertise of robots is that it is pushed up employment fairly than the reverse,” Boumphrey informed CNBC.

Nonetheless, not everyone seems to be satisfied that robotics will not result in a drop-off within the workforce.

AI robots have already been forecasted to exceed the working inhabitants over the following few a long time, with one 2024 Citi report displaying that they’ll enhance to 1.3 billion by 2035 and over 4 billion by 2050.

Rob Garlick, Citi International Insights’ former head of innovation, know-how, and future of labor, informed CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” in February that leaders will transfer to switch staff as humanoid robots have already got a faster payback interval than people.

“We’ve a management system within the financial phrases and enterprise phrases that celebrates profitability,” Garlick mentioned on the time. “If you marry profitability up with the know-how progress, we’ve got the most important commerce in historical past coming, which is principally that synthetic intelligence will be capable to do increasingly, higher and higher, cheaper and cheaper, and that can be capable to substitute for folks.”

The variety of younger folks between the ages of 16 and 24, who are usually not in schooling, employment or coaching within the U.Ok., reached over a million by the tip of Could, in keeping with information from the nation’s Office for National Statistics final week.

Younger folks face main challenges within the job market, from AI replacing entry-level positions to elevated competition for jobs. 

Boumphrey mentioned it is a “nationwide disaster” with a key problem being that younger persons are unprepared for the world of labor.

“It is the mixture of rising up in Covid and an period of smartphones and social media…we have introduced up a technology of younger folks whose concept of participating with the neighborhood is to take a seat in a darkened room, be on their telephone, and scroll; that is not their fault.”

Regardless of AI layoffs and youth unemployment considerations, Boumphrey mentioned Amazon “can’t discover sufficient folks to do the expert jobs that we’d like,” from robotic technicians to mechatronic engineers.

The corporate has created over 6,000 apprenticeships within the U.Ok. to deal with this expertise hole and provides employees £3000 a 12 months to coach on nationally acknowledged programs.

Correction: This text has been up to date to precisely mirror the rationale behind Amazon’s layoffs.