Amazon is permanently laying off 121 workers across Seattle, Bellevue, and Sumner starting in October, according to a state filing that lands as the company pours record sums into artificial intelligence infrastructure. The cuts touch 12 regional facilities and hit roles ranging from entry-level engineers and technical writers to a human resources director and a vice president of legal affairs.
The breakdown, detailed in Amazon's Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing with the Washington State Employment Security Department, shows 53 positions eliminated in Bellevue, 49 of them at the SEA106 building, plus 35 in Seattle, 32 at the BFI1 fulfillment center in Sumner, and one remote worker, according to GeekWire. Amazon gave affected employees 90 days, between July 1 and July 29, to apply for open internal roles before separations take effect. As reported by KOMO News, the layoffs are expected to begin October 1 and are classified in the filing as permanent, with Amazon not yet indicating which departments will be affected or whether additional cuts are planned.
A state Rapid Response team and WorkSource will contact affected employees to help with the transition, KOMO News reports. Amazon has told staff that generative AI is expected to automate portions of white-collar work over time, and that the technology will also create demand for new AI-focused roles, per the same account.
Part of a Longer Pattern of Cuts
This is not an isolated reduction. The 121-person notice follows a multi-phase series of Washington layoffs, including 2,303 state jobs cut in October 2025, 2,198 positions eliminated in February 2026, and 57 jobs cut earlier this summer, according to GeekWire. KOMO News separately reported that past Amazon layoffs in the region have included roughly 630 positions in Bellevue and more than 1,400 in Seattle, hitting teams across human resources, retail, Amazon Web Services, Prime Video, and other corporate divisions.
Those state-level cuts sit inside a much larger global wave. Amazon eliminated roughly 16,000 corporate positions worldwide in January, a reduction Hoodline covered as part of its broader workforce reduction, and the company also cut an unspecified number of jobs within its artificial general intelligence organization in July. CEO Andy Jassy has told employees that generative AI is expected to reshape white-collar work over time, and an October 2025 round of roughly 14,000 corporate layoffs represented about 4% of Amazon's corporate workforce at that point.
Seattle Loses Its Employer Crown
The layoffs land against a backdrop of Amazon's shifting geography within King County. Amazon lost its status as Seattle's largest private employer in March, when its citywide workforce fell below 50,000, placing it behind the University of Washington, according to Axios. The company had employed more than 60,000 corporate and tech workers in Seattle back in 2020 and has since shed roughly 1 million square feet of office space there while expanding its Bellevue footprint instead.
Despite the cuts, Amazon still counts more than 14,000 workers in Bellevue and maintains a major statewide presence: the company employs more than 80,000 full- and part-time workers across Washington in corporate offices, data centers, and fulfillment hubs, supporting an estimated 250,000 indirect jobs and contributing over $380 billion to the state economy since 1994, per Amazon's own figures. That Bellevue anchor has also shaped major real estate deals, including the roughly $650 million sale Hoodline reported involving Amazon-anchored office towers at Bellevue's West Main development.
Billions Flowing Into AI Instead of Headcount
The job cuts are unfolding alongside an enormous reallocation of capital toward artificial intelligence. On its July 30 earnings call, Amazon raised its 2026 capital expenditure target to approximately $220 billion, a 76% jump over 2025, directing most of that spending toward AI infrastructure, AWS data centers, and custom chips, according to Inc. That spending has pushed the company's 12-month free cash flow to negative $7.6 billion, even as Jassy told investors Amazon still lacks enough server capacity to meet enterprise AI demand.
The bet appears to be paying off on the revenue side. Amazon Web Services reported second-quarter revenue of $42.2 billion, a 37% year-over-year increase and its fastest growth rate in 18 quarters, while holding a $496 billion cloud order backlog, per Value Add VC. Management has said triple-digit growth in AWS AI products has made server capacity, rather than customer demand, the primary constraint on cloud revenue.
State Law Now Requires Faster Notice
Washington's disclosure requirements around layoffs like this one changed last year. The state's Mini-WARN Act, Senate Bill 5525, took effect in July 2025 and expanded notification rules by requiring 60 days of advance notice from private employers with 50 or more full-time state workers, along with civil penalties of up to $500 per day per violation, according to Seyfarth Shaw LLP. The law mirrors federal WARN provisions but catches medium-sized layoffs that federal thresholds might otherwise miss.
Amazon is far from the only Puget Sound tech employer trimming staff under that framework. The state's Employment Security Department received at least 21 WARN filings from information technology employers in 2025 affecting up to 6,700 workers, with losses concentrated in King County and dominated by Seattle-based Amazon and Redmond-based Microsoft. Bellevue-headquartered T-Mobile has filed its own cuts this year, shedding 393 positions in February across engineering, management, and vice president roles, then cutting 77 more statewide jobs and closing seven retail stores in August, a round Hoodline reported earlier this month.
