Retail job losses are surging, with Amazon and Target cutting nearly 32,000 corporate jobs combined, signaling a major industry restructuring.

The job cuts come as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has said he envisions the company relying on AI agents to replace human workers.

"We're going to promote based on AI," said Amazon VP Jamie Simonoff. "We're going to promote based on how you're integrating AI into your job."

Amazon CFO Brian Olsavsky shared that the company has increased its full-year capital expenditure projections to $125 billion. The company had previously guided for $100 billion in the June quarter. Olsavsky expects the number to be even higher in 2026.

In its financial results for the third quarter ending September 30, 2025, Amazon’s net sales climbed 13% year-over-year to $180.2 billion, up from $158.9 billion in the same period of 2024. Excluding foreign exchange tailwinds, sales were up 12%.

A major outage last week disrupted Amazon's cloud division for 15 hours, affecting hundreds of companies and raising questions about AWS' resilience.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the biggest firms in Silicon Valley have invested $400 billion into artificial intelligence technology just this year. Tech companies like Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazing are expected to increase their investment in AI next year.

Investors were worried AWS was falling behind in AI. A new growth trajectory has restored confidence in Amazon’s cloud business.