Amazon Plans To Shave Millions Of Square Feet Off Its Office Footprint
Amazon is planning to cut 49,000 desks from its office footprint in perhaps the biggest shift in its real estate strategy since it courted offers from cities and states for a second headquarters in 2017.
Management told members of Amazon’s global real estate and facilities group on Feb. 3 that the company aims to cut its average office vacancy from around 31% to just under 23% this year, according to a transcript of the call obtained by the Puget Sound Business Journal.
The space-saving goal could impact more than 14M SF of the tech giant’s office space if each desk is assigned to one worker, with the average workspace having 146 SF per worker in 2024, according to CBRE.
The plan was shared in a meeting with the real estate team shortly before CEO Andy Jassy told investors on the firm’s fourth-quarter earnings call that it was planning to spend $200B on artificial intelligence investments in 2026, and weeks before the e-commerce and cloud computing behemoth announced a $50B investment in OpenAI, according to the PSBJ.
A person familiar with the town hall meeting confirmed the transcript's veracity to Bisnow on Wednesday morning.
Amazon eliminated roughly 30,000 positions total in two rounds of layoffs in October and January as the firm works to reduce management layers and unlock efficiencies driven by AI.
“We regularly evaluate our office footprint based on the needs of our business and employees,” an Amazon spokesperson said in an email Wednesday. “Since 2023, when employees began returning to the office, we've prioritized spaces that foster the innovation and collaboration that drive our work and ensure we're delivering for customers.”
The spokesperson declined to provide details about any geographic focus or timeline for the initiative. It plans to reach its goal through lease expirations, “hibernating” some offices and subleasing or terminating other leases, Martha Schwarzkopf Doyle, a senior real estate manager, said at the meeting, according to the PSBJ.
“If you can envision a sold-out Taylor Swift concert and give every single person their desk, that’s how many desks we need to get rid of,” she said.
Amazon had 40.2M SF of office space in the U.S. and another 28.3M SF around the globe at the end of 2025.
Schwarzkopf Doyle said the firm aims to hit a 22.9% global vacancy rate this year but had an ideal target closer to 11%. Amazon is strategically expanding in some markets while it cuts its footprint, and during the call, management outlined plans to add 1.8M SF of new office space to its portfolio this year.
Amazon ended up with too much space after leasing additional offices ahead of its return-to-office push, Schwarzkopf Doyle said at the town hall, while also citing a “change in headcount strategy.”
Under Jassy, Amazon was one of the most aggressive and outspoken firms pulling workers back to the office after the pandemic, and it mostly eliminated hybrid work at the start of 2025. Thousands of Amazon employees were told in June to relocate to specific areas to be closer to their teams as part of the company's belief in the power of in-person collaboration.
The firm has also positioned itself on the leading edge of AI adoption, with Jassy telling staff in a June memo that some jobs were quickly becoming obsolete.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” he said. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs.”
