Amazon cut jobs inside its artificial general intelligence group on July 22, 2026, while AWS committed $1 billion to a forward-deployed engineering push, signaling a shift toward AI revenue from customer deployment rather than only model research. Employees working under Adeeb Shanaa, vice president of AGI data services, and Vishal Sharma, vice president of AGI information, reported being affected by the layoffs on online forums, though Amazon did not say how many roles were eliminated. U.S. employees affected by the cuts would receive 90 days of pay and benefits, outplacement support, access to transitional health benefits, and severance eligibility. An Amazon spokesperson said the company was still building large AI models and called that work one of its most important priorities, adding that Amazon was "sharpening our focus on the initiatives that matter most for customers, so we can move faster on what counts." AWS is committing an initial $1 billion to the Forward Deployed Engineering effort, with Francessca Vasquez, AWS vice president of frontier AI engineering and services, citing "a ton of demand" from customers for agentic AI patterns. AWS FDE teams are already working with the Allen Institute, Cox Automotive, the NBA, the NFL, Ricoh, and Southwest Airlines, aiming to compress deployments from months to days.