Corporate America Shares Clues on How AI Will Impact Its Workforce

Good morning. Although that’s not the case for some Amazon employees. The tech giant just announced that it’s cutting 14,000 corporate jobs, marking one of the biggest rounds of layoffs in the company’s history.

Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, Beth Galetti, announced the cuts in a blog post and said the reductions are a continuation of CEO Andy Jassy’s drive to operate the company “like the world’s largest startup.”

Speaking of staffing reductions, artificial intelligence’s impact on company headcounts remains a top concern for workers. Today we’re looking at how a top Wall Street bank and a tech company gave us a preview of what to expect.

What’s on deck:

Markets: A once red-hot corner of commercial real estate has cooled off considerably.

Tech: Tesla’s chair gave a stark warning about what’s at stake if Elon Musk’s pay package isn’t approved.

Business: The scariest part about Halloween might be the price of candy.

But first, what does AI mean for ME?

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The big story

AI and the employee

Forget the billions getting invested. Forget fears over a bubble. Most people’s biggest question about AI is simple: How will it impact my job?

Executives at two very different companies recently offered clues on how corporate America is thinking about AI’s impact on its workforce.

First, you have Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who told Axios that AI isn’t taking away bankers’ jobs. Instead, the tech just means the bank needs “more high-value people.”

Solomon acknowledged the widely held belief that AI will change how bankers do their job, but he reiterated his previous prediction that the bank will have more employees a decade from now, thanks to AI.

Then you have Vercel, which helps developers build and deploy websites and applications. The company reduced a 10-person sales team down to one after a top-performing worker trained an AI agent to do most of the tasks, the firm’s COO told BI’s Lakshmi Varanasi.

The other nine employees weren’t fired, though. Instead, they’re now focusing on more complex, higher-value sales work, the exec told Lakshmi.

Despite one being a prestigious Wall Street bank and the other a relatively new tech company, both shared a common narrative regarding the AI-and-the-worker debate: The tech is here to elevate, not eliminate.

Companies’ willingness to stick to that mantra remains to be seen.

For a while, businesses were in a holding pattern, or a “Great Freeze,” BI’s Madison Hoff wrote. Numerous uncertainties — tariffs, AI, and the broader economy — meant companies were neither hiring nor firing.

But that trend seems to be thawing, as is evident from Amazon’s recent news. And there’s no guarantee everyone whose job was automated by AI will still have higher-value work to focus on.

For every worker who AI enables to work on something more valuable, there will be those who can’t find another way to contribute. (Though, perhaps that’s more the employees’ problem than AI.)

There’s also AI’s business model to consider. As the companies touting these tools face more pressure from investors to generate revenue, the cost of using them may rise. That, in turn, will force companies to reconsider their budgets and headcounts.

Even those working on the very AI expected to lead to so much disruption aren’t immune. That was evident when Meta cut 600 workers from its Meta Superintelligence Labs.

We’ll get an even better sense this week about how those with front-row seats to the AI revolution are thinking about headcounts when Big Tech reports earnings.

3 things in markets

1. One of the pandemic’s real estate bets is now off. Lab space was a hot bet in real estate, especially during COVID, when it played a leading role in combating the disease. Thanks to a pullback in federal research funding and venture capital, compounded with high vacancy rates, the sector is now suffering.

2. Investors are stoked about a reprieve from trade tensions. A US-China trade truce sent stocks to all-time highs, extending the gains logged on Friday. From investors buying chip stocks and treasury yields jumping, here are the five big moves in the market.

3. The Beyond Meat meme investor has a new target. Dimitri Semenikhin is eyeing ETHZilla Corporation, a biotech firm that pivoted to crypto. He told BI that his case for the stock is similar to the reason he thinks Beyond Meat is undervalued. He’s also bullish on crypto in general, despite its volatility.

3 things in tech

1. Meta’s metaverse unit is getting a reshuffling. Gabriel Aul and Ryan Cairns will now lead the company’s metaverse efforts, per an internal memo sent by Meta’s CTO, which was seen by BI. In a different memo — also seen by BI — Vishal Shah, who has helped lead its metaverse bets over the last four years, announced that he’s moving to Meta Superintelligence Labs.

2. Tesla shareholders get an ultimatum. Tesla chair Robyn Denholm sent out a warning to shareholders regarding Elon Musk’s coming $1 trillion pay package: Either approve the package or risk losing Musk as Tesla’s CEO. The package has seen pushback from proxy firms ISS and Glass Lewis. One thing he doesn’t have to worry about: where he stands with the president these days.

3. Fake it till you make it. Tech hopefuls are putting San Francisco in their social media bios even if they don’t live there. They do it to attract investors, for the clout, and to signal their commitment to the industry.

3 things in business

1. Everybody scream! (At the price of those Twix bars.) Prices of candy and gum have skyrocketed, increasing at a rate much faster than inflation. Tariffs are a contributor, whether on cane sugar, cocoa, or elsewhere. But hey, at least your dentist is probably happy.

2. Why Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount departure matters. The guy behind “Yellowstone” is heading to Comcast’s NBCUniversal. It’s a big loss for Paramount owner David Ellison, who previously signaled that keeping Sheridan is a priority, BI’s Peter Kafka writes. Meanwhile, Paramount Skydance is set to lay off over 1,000 employees on Wednesday, a person familiar with the plans confirmed to BI.

3. Lessons about happiness after five years of mood-tracking. BI’s Julia Pugachevsky tracked her moods every day for almost five years. She learned a lot about happiness, including one habit that greatly improved her mood than anything else.

In other news

What’s happening today

• Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
• UnitedHealth Group, Visa, UPS, and Mondelez report earnings.

Dan DeFrancesco, deputy executive editor and anchor, in New York. Hallam Bullock, senior editor, in London. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.