David Limp, senior vice chairman of gadgets and providers at Amazon.com Inc., presents the Amazon Echo Dot sensible speaker throughout an unveiling occasion on the firm’s Spheres headquarters in Seattle, Washington, U.S., on Thursday, Sept. 20, 2018.
Andrew Burton | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Amazon hasn’t given up on its Alexa voice assistant, {hardware} chief Dave Limp mentioned Friday, though the workforce behind the expertise was a primary goal of the most important layoffs within the firm’s historical past.
Amazon final yr started shedding workers in its company workforce as a part of CEO Andy Jassy’s broader transfer to curtail bills amid a worsening financial outlook and slowing income development. The firm’s gadgets and providers group, which oversees the event of merchandise corresponding to Alexa, Echo sensible audio system and Kindle e-readers, was among the many teams affected.
Just underneath 2,000 individuals in Limp’s division have been let go on account of the job cuts, he instructed CNBC’s Jon Fortt in an interview on TechCheck.
This week, Jassy mentioned the corporate goals to eradicate greater than 18,000 roles, principally in its shops and human sources organizations. Previously, an individual accustomed to the matter instructed CNBC that 10,000 workers can be lower, however famous that the quantity was fluid and will change.
Alongside the layoffs, Amazon has additionally frozen new hiring in its company workforce, and shuttered a few of its extra experimental initiatives, corresponding to its telehealth service and a video-calling system for teenagers.
“What we did is we looked at projects that were probably, in this uncertainty, the risk-reward for those projects and what they might deliver for customers wasn’t quite there,” Limp mentioned. “Part of that was in Alexa, part of that was in other parts of my organization.”
Still, Amazon stays “fully committed” to the Alexa unit regardless of the corporate taking steps to be extra disciplined with prices in “a very uncertain economy,” Limp mentioned.
“There’s still thousands and thousands of people working on this project,” mentioned Limp, talking from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “It’s a big project.”
Since its launch in 2014, Amazon has made huge investments in Alexa and assigned high expertise to develop the expertise, largely on the course of Jeff Bezos, who first pitched Alexa and strongly believed voice would play a key position in how individuals work together with computer systems sooner or later. At one level, Amazon had 5,000 individuals engaged on Alexa and Echo.
Amazon has bought gadgets such because the Echo at or close to value as a result of its purpose is not to become profitable from them. Instead, the corporate sees them as a car for bringing clients into the broader Amazon ecosystem, the place they’re going to buy one thing from amazon.com or its different properties.
Limp rejected the concept Amazon could have to boost costs considerably because it takes a tougher take a look at prices. The costs of some commodities utilized in Amazon gadgets, corresponding to reminiscence and shows, has elevated, and people might get handed alongside to customers, he mentioned. But typically Amazon’s {hardware} business mannequin stays the identical, Limp mentioned.
“We try to sell our products roughly at break-even, sometimes a little bit more,” Limp mentioned. “Then, as customers use them, say they shop from their Alexa, that benefits all of Amazon, and gives the customer a great shopping experience, and that’s how we want to monetize these things moving forward.”
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