In little more than five months, Amazon and Microsoft have announced they’re collectively cutting more than 29,000 roles.

Microsoft has let go more than 15,000 workers since May, and Amazon announced last week it was cutting 14,000 roles. Artificial intelligence has taken some of the blame for the layoffs, but not in an obvious way.

The companies aren’t in financial distress — far from it. Rather, there’s a desire now among the tech giants to trim their operations, to be lean and flexible enough to keep up with AI development. For the first time in tech’s recent history, allocating capital toward employees isn’t the top priority.

Since Nov. 30, 2022, when AI giant OpenAI launched ChatGPT, tech companies have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into computer chips, data centers and ne

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