What Projected Job Cuts at These Two Mag 7 Firms Says About AI in 2027 Alex Sirois Mon, October 12, 2026 at 7:15 AM EDT 5 min read AMZN META XOM Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Amazon's AWS surged 37% to $42B as both Amazon and Meta fund record AI spending by eliminating thousands of jobs from their payrolls.
Amazon sells AI automation to companies like Exxon Mobil for email and CRM work, while Meta deploys it internally to power a $75B ad platform.
Amazon leads the AI labor shift with shares up 14% YTD versus Meta's 9%, profiting by cutting its own costs and selling the same tools.
Just released. Our analysts combed the entire stock market and named the ten best stocks to buy right now, and Amazon didn't make the cut. Enter your email to see the names that beat AMZN. The report is free. Enter your email and see if any of your stocks made the cut.
Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) both reported Q2 results in late July. Both are trimming staff while spending record sums on AI. Meta cut roughly 8,000 jobs in May. Amazon keeps automating its warehouses and its code. Put the two side by side and you get an early look at how AI will transform Big Tech payrolls in 2027.
AWS revenue reached $42.23B, up 37%, its fastest growth in 18 quarters. That pace shows AI demand turning into actual revenue. CEO Andy Jassy said "our AI and Chips businesses each eclipsed run rates of more than $25 billion." In its warehouses, Amazon expects to "more than double our fleet of robotic arms like Cardinal and Sparrow in 2026" as it works to cut touches per package. The company also booked $1.8B in severance tied to planned role eliminations last fall, and those robotic arms will handle work that people used to do.
Why Didn't AMZN Make The Top 10 List?
24/7 Wall St has helped investors make money for over two decades, and our top analysts just finished ranking the definitive Top 10 Stocks To Buy Now. Not the ten biggest companies. Not the ten everyone is arguing about. The ten best stocks to buy right now.
The report is free, and you can see why we think each stock is a top investment today.
Enter Your Email and See the Ten →
Meta's quarter was messier. EPS of $6.18 missed the $7.22 estimate, which ended a six-quarter beat streak. Severance of $1.18B and $2.4B in legal charges cut operating margin to 31% from 43%, a sharp drop. Even so, compensation kept rising on hiring of "particularly AI talent." Meta is swapping one kind of worker for another.
Amazon rents out the machinery behind automation. Its AWS backlog stands at $496 billion, and Kiro, its coding agent, tripled in usage quarter over quarter. Companies like BMW and Exxon Mobil (NYSE:XOM) run Amazon Quick to handle email, calendars, and CRM updates. That is office work moving to software.
Meta points AI at its own feeds and at small businesses. Advantage+ hit a $75 billion run rate. Brazilian car-rental firm Movida saw 85% of conversations resolved entirely by the AI agent, a sign that customer service roles face automation pressure. Mark Zuckerberg said for "a significantly higher margin on selling intelligence rather than selling compute directly."
Meta says its plans are "geared towards maximizing 2026 and 2027 capacity" but gave no 2027 capex figure. Full-year expenses rose to $165B to $169B. I will be watching whether the savings from the layoffs actually show up in the margin. Amazon expects to double its power capacity by the end of 2027 from 2025 levels, and Jassy said most of that capacity is "largely reserved." All of that power and data-center expansion has to come from somewhere, which is why we pulled together seven suppliers behind the AI boom in a free report.
To me, these job cuts say AI has moved from experiment to budget line. Companies now pay for it partly by reducing staff. Amazon makes money both ways: it cuts its own costs and sells the same tools to other employers. Its shares are up 13.69% year to date, compared with 9.14% for Meta, so the market seems to agree. Meta's ad engine remains strong, and two better quarters on margins would strengthen its case. If those arrive, Meta could close the gap.
If you have cash sitting in your account right now, give this two minutes. After more than two decades of helping investors beat the market, our top analysts at 24/7 Wall St. put together a definitive report on the Top 10 Stocks To Buy Today. And AMZN wasn't one of them.
They combed the entire market. It's not 10 ideas, not 10 stocks everyone is talking about, it's what their research points to as the 10 best stocks to buy right now, and it's free. Read more here and see which stocks made the list -->>
Contact editorial@247wallst.com for any questions or corrections.
