As part of a significant restructuring of its audio division, Amazon is closing its Wondery podcast studio and laying off some 110 employees, according to Bloomberg News. In light of industry-wide difficulties, the move represents the tech giant’s strategic shift away from its initial podcasting goals.
As current episodes are redistributed between Amazon’s Audible platform and a new “creator services” team devoted to personality-driven content, such as the well-liked Jason and Travis Kelce podcast, Wondery CEO Jen Sargent will also leave the firm.
Why Amazon Shut Down Wondery?
In an internal document seen by Bloomberg, Steve Boom, vice president of audio, Twitch, and games at Amazon, stated that the podcast industry has changed dramatically in recent years.
The definition of what it means to be a podcast developer has also become more hazy due to the popularity of video. During the podcast boom in 2020, Wondery was acquired by Amazon for about $300 million, enabling it to function independently at first with its own membership app. But when the medium changed, the business found it difficult to successfully compete with sites like YouTube and Spotify.
What’s Next for Amazon’s Podcast Strategy?
Boom clarified in the memo that these adjustments will not only better suit Amazon’s teams as they strive to capitalise on the strategic opportunities that lie ahead, but more importantly, they will guarantee that the company has the proper framework in place to provide creators, customers, and advertisers with the greatest possible experience. The studio’s narrative-driven content, such as the well-liked Dr Death series, will combine with Audible’s operations, and the Wondery+ subscription service will now report to Audible.
Amazon’s Broader AI and Audio Strategy
In order to better take advantage of sponsorship opportunities across Amazon’s wider platform, well-known talent programmes with stars like Dax Shepard will move to the new creative services team.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) has also revealed that Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker AI will be the first to offer OpenAI’s open-weight models.
This move would make OpenAI’s technology available to millions of AWS users, enabling the company’s clients to develop generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications.
Amazon has stated in a blog post that its platforms will offer OpenAI’s two new open-weight foundation models, gpt-oss-120b and gpt-oss-20b.
Tech Layoffs in 2025: A Continuing Trend
With big companies like Google, Microsoft, and others continuing to reduce their workforces, layoffs in the tech sector are not expected to halt in 2025.
Companies are still cutting employees in an effort to simplify operations, save money, and emphasise automation and artificial intelligence, even though these figures are much lower than the major layoffs that occurred between 2022 and 2023.
Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks layoffs in the industry, reports that 93 organisations have laid off nearly 23,500 tech workers so far this year, and the number is still growing.
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