Amazon.com has said it had laid off tons of employees working on the e-commerce giant’s delivery drone job as part of a reorganization of the team.
The US platform has been working on a strategy to deliver goods to millions of its clients using a fleet of unmanned drones, and had received federal approval in August to begin testing commercial deliveries from the country.
“We are reorganizing one small team within our larger Prime Air organization to allow us to best align with the needs of our customers and the business,” Amazon spokeswoman Kristen Kish stated in a statement, without providing a number on how many employees will be terminated.
Kish said the company was working to find roles for the affected workers “in the areas where we are hiring”.
The company had laid off R&D and manufacturing staff from Amazon Prime Air job and had reached tentative deals with two external manufacturers – Austria’s FACC Aerospace and Spain’s Aernnova Aerospace – to build components for its long-awaited drone, the Financial Times reported earlier in the afternoon.
The full conditions of the arrangements with the manufacturers were being finalised, the FT report said, citing a individual familiar with Amazon’s plans.
Aernnova and FACC didn’t respond to a request for comment from our content partners at Reuters.
The team at Platform Executive hope you have enjoyed the ‘[post_title]’ article. Initial reporting via our official content partners at Thomson Reuters. Reporting by Aishwarya Nair in Bengaluru. additional reporting by Juby Babu. Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips.
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