Amazon laying off hundreds at Prime Video, MGM Studio, Twitch divisions

Tech and retail giant Amazon.com is trimming its headcount further with fresh rounds of layoffs, this time in its media divisions.

Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios informed staff in an internal memo Wednesday that the organization would be "eliminating several hundred roles" by the end of this week.

Hopkins explained in the note, which Amazon shared with FOX Business, that the reasoning behind the layoffs is that the company has "identified opportunities to reduce or discontinue investments in certain areas while increasing our investment and focus on content and product initiatives that deliver the most impact."

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He said the job cuts were a "difficult decision," and noted that the employees impacted would receive severance packages that include transitional benefits and assistance with external job placement.

Separately on Wednesday, Amazon's Twitch service announced its own "difficult update," sharing on its blog an email from CEO Dan Clancy to employees earlier in the day informing them the company is slashing its headcount by 35% to around 500 people.

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"Over the last year, we’ve been working to build a more sustainable business so that Twitch will be here for the long run and throughout the year we have cut costs and made many decisions to be more efficient," Clancy wrote. "Unfortunately, despite these efforts, it has become clear that our organization is still meaningfully larger than it needs to be given the size of our business." 

He noted the company paid out more than $1 billion to streamers in 2023.

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Amazon cut more than 27,000 jobs last year as a part of a wave of tech layoffs after the industry hired heavily during the pandemic.

Reuters contributed to this report.