Amazon reshapes 2026 priorities with 16,000 corporate role reductions and a reset in physical grocery

Amazon is making another major round of organizational changes, telling employees that about 16,000 roles will be impacted as it works to reduce layers and speed up decision-making. The announcement, dated January 27, 2026 ET, lands alongside a wider retreat from several in-person retail experiments and sets up a closely watched earnings update in early February.

For workers, the message is immediate and personal: some teams will shrink, some projects will be regrouped, and many people will be asked to navigate a fast internal job-search window. For customers, the shift is more subtle but still significant, with Amazon focusing more of its grocery future on delivery and a larger Whole Foods footprint rather than stand-alone Amazon-branded stores.

A leaner corporate structure, with a push toward faster ownership

In its employee communication, Amazon framed the cuts as part of an ongoing effort that began in October 2025 to reduce bureaucracy, flatten layers, and increase ownership inside teams. The company said this latest step affects roughly 16,000 roles across Amazon.

Amazon also laid out how it plans to support people whose roles are eliminated. Most US-based employees are expected to receive a 90-day period to look for a new position internally, with timing varying elsewhere based on local requirements. For those who do not move into a new role, the company said transition support will include severance and other assistance, depending on eligibility and location.

This round follows a previous corporate reduction announced in October 2025. Together, the two moves represent one of the larger white-collar reshuffles Amazon has made in recent years, and it underscores how aggressively the company is trying to simplify how work gets done across a sprawling set of businesses.

Grocery goes more delivery-heavy as Amazon steps back from its own store formats

A day earlier, on January 26, 2026 ET, Amazon said it will close its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, describing the decision as a way to prioritize investment in areas with clearer growth potential. The company said it has not yet built a distinctive enough customer experience with the right economics to scale those Amazon-branded grocery formats broadly.

Instead, Amazon is leaning into two tracks that it says are already resonating: faster online grocery delivery and an expanded Whole Foods store base. The company said customers can continue ordering Amazon Fresh online in available areas and highlighted its plan to expand same-day grocery delivery that includes perishables to additional communities during 2026.

On the store side, Amazon said it intends to open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores over the next few years and expand its smaller “Daily Shop” concept, with five additional locations planned by the end of 2026. Some former Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh sites are expected to be converted into Whole Foods stores, though details will vary by location.

Palm scanning winds down as the company narrows retail experiments

Amazon is also discontinuing its Amazon One palm-based authentication service for retail businesses, with a target end date of June 3, 2026. The company has said user data tied to the service will be deleted after the wind-down.

In practical terms, this is another signal that Amazon is tightening the focus of its in-person experimentation. The company has emphasized that it will keep innovating in physical retail, but the current direction favors formats and services that can scale predictably, rather than novelty for its own sake.

A few dates now shape the near-term roadmap for employees, shoppers, and investors:

• January 26, 2026 ET: Amazon announces plans to close Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores

• January 27, 2026 ET: Amazon says about 16,000 corporate roles will be impacted

• February 5, 2026 ET: Amazon plans to discuss Q4 2025 and full-year 2025 results at 5 pm ET

• June 3, 2026 ET: Amazon One retail authentication is set to be discontinued

February earnings becomes the next proof point for the new direction

Amazon’s next major public checkpoint arrives February 5, 2026 ET, when it is scheduled to discuss quarterly and full-year results. After a week dominated by restructuring headlines, attention is likely to shift to what the company chooses to protect, what it chooses to accelerate, and how it talks about efficiency without slowing innovation.

Amazon has said it will continue hiring and investing in strategic areas it views as critical to its future. In the days ahead, the most meaningful signal may be how quickly teams stabilize after the internal job-search period, and whether the grocery reset translates into faster delivery expansion and clearer store growth plans rather than continued experimentation.