🧑‍🏭 Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs

Good morning. Happy National Internet Day - celebrate the web that brought you memes, this newsletter, and a million cat videos.

Ruchirr Sharma & Shatakshi Sharmaa  

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• 🧑‍🏭 Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs amid AI-driven restructuring

• 💰️ OpenAI’s $500B Reboot

• Bite-sized summaries

  • 🚀 ISRO gears up for dual launches

  • ✈️ DGCA flags Akasa Air lapses

• 🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

LAYOFFS

🧑‍🏭 Amazon to cut 14,000 jobs amid AI-driven restructuring

Amazon has announced plans to lay off up to 14,000 corporate employees, one of its largest job cuts since the 27,000 layoffs of 2022–23. The reductions will span multiple divisions — including HR, devices, operations, communications, and podcasting — as part of a company-wide drive to streamline operations and “reduce bureaucracy.”

Senior VP Beth Galetti said the move aims to “shift resources and realise efficiency gains”, aligning with CEO Andy Jassy’s push to embed AI across Amazon’s operations. Employees affected will have 90 days to find internal roles or will receive severance, health benefits, and outplacement support.

The layoffs coincide with Amazon’s expanding automation agenda. Leaked internal plans suggest the company could replace up to 600,000 U.S. warehouse jobs with robots by 2027, achieving 75% robotisation and saving an estimated $12.6 billion in labour costs.

Despite the cuts, Amazon continues to hire in select growth areas and reported crossing $20 billion in e-commerce exports from India, targeting $80 billion by 2030.

The announcement comes just ahead of Amazon’s quarterly earnings — a test of whether AI-driven “efficiency” can offset the human cost of automation.

Read more: Economic Times

BORROWING

💰️ OpenAI’s $500B Reboot

In one of the biggest shake-ups in tech history, Microsoft and OpenAI have inked a new deal that transforms the ChatGPT maker into a public benefit corporation (PBC) and pegs its valuation at a jaw-dropping $500 billion.

The move gives OpenAI far greater freedom to raise money and cut deals, while ensuring that its nonprofit parent, the OpenAI Foundation, retains control. Microsoft will hold a 27% stake (worth about $135 billion), locking in nearly a 10x return on its original $13.8 billion investment.

At the heart of the agreement is a massive $250 billion cloud contract that keeps OpenAI running on Microsoft’s Azure through 2032. However, Microsoft’s previous right of first refusal, which limited OpenAI’s ability to work with other cloud providers, is gone.

This restructuring resolves years of tension between the two AI powerhouses. The 2019 deal had given Microsoft deep rights over OpenAI’s work, but as ChatGPT ballooned to 700 million weekly users, those constraints became untenable.

OpenAI’s new structure, a hybrid of mission and market, is designed to balance AI safety with commercial freedom. A new independent panel will even vet any claims that OpenAI has achieved AGI (artificial general intelligence).

In short, OpenAI is now freer, richer, and still deeply tied to Microsoft, setting the stage for the next phase of the AI arms race.

Read more: Economic Times

GENERAL OVERVIEW

🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

🚀 ISRO gears up for dual launches - ISRO Chairman V. Narayanan announced that the agency will launch two LVM-3 missions by year-end — the CMS-03 (GSAT-7R) satellite in early November and the U.S. communication satellite BlueBird-6 later in 2025. He confirmed that 90% of work on the Gaganyaan human spaceflight mission is complete, targeting 2027 for launch. ISRO is also progressing on Chandrayaan-4, aimed at returning lunar samples, and plans to deploy the first module of the Bharatiya Antariksh Station by 2028, with completion slated for 2035. Narayanan highlighted India’s exponential space growth, with 95 of 433 foreign satellites launched in just the past decade.

✈️ DGCA flags Akasa Air lapses - India’s aviation regulator DGCA has flagged several compliance lapses at Akasa Air after reviewing surveillance data from April to September 2025. The findings cite repetitive procedural errors, documentation gaps, and systemic compliance failures across areas such as flight safety, safety management systems, and crew duty time limits. Akasa Air, which operates a fleet of 30 aircraft, stated it has provided comprehensive and timely responses to all DGCA observations. The airline emphasized that such audits are routine across all carriers and reaffirmed its commitment to maintaining high operational and safety standards in accordance with regulatory requirements.

HEADLINES

🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

What’s happening in India (and around the world 🌍️)

• India’s growth outlook strong, trade diversifies amid US tariff tensions, government says

  South Korea’s trade chief charts path for surviving US–China competition

• States sue over Trump administration suspending food benefits during shutdown

• Ukraine targets Moscow with drones for third straight night, Russia says