Amazon stock is flat over the past year. The rest of the "magnificent seven":

- Google: +70%

- Nvidia: +49% - Apple: +7%

- Meta: Flat

- SHOP (closest comp): +19.41%

- Mercado Libre (international comp): +20.73%

So basically, the "tech world" is dividing itself, in the eyes of investors, into two camps: companies that will benefit from AI tailwinds and companies that will not. And all the money is going to the companies that will.

Amazon is more and more considered to be part of the latter group.

This is especially concerning of Amazon because it seems like AWS--the cash cow--has somehow missed becoming the cloud provider for AI compute needs.

As such, Amazon needs to give investors some reason to hold amazon stock. If you're not part of a rising tide, the only reason left is "we are very profitable."

So yeah, Amazon will have to cut costs to show more profitability and become further investable.

So yes, the layoffs have to do with AI...but not the way they are spinning it.