Amazon expands warehouse robotics while retaining more than 1.5 million workers

what happened

Amazon runs more than 1 million robots in its warehouses, helping make tens of millions of same-day and next-day deliveries, Ars Technica reports. The company expects to expand that fleet substantially and is establishing additional factories to produce increasingly capable machines. At the same time, Amazon remains the world’s second-largest corporate employer, with more than 1.5 million full-time and part-time workers listed in its 2025 annual report.

Amazon executives say robots take on the most demanding fulfillment-center jobs, reducing physical strain and injury risks for employees. Labor advocates and independent researchers, however, argue that automation can also intensify work when people operate alongside machines. George Mason University professor Brian Greenwood told Ars that collaborative robots are physically close to workers and can influence the pace of their tasks. The US warehouse sector’s injury and illness rate has typically been more than twice the average for all industries, according to OSHA.

The company accelerated its robotics program after acquiring Kiva Systems in 2012. Renamed Amazon Robotics, the unit develops mobile robots and robotic arms, which Amazon primarily manufactures in Massachusetts; new production facilities are planned for Austin, Texas, and Greenwood, Indiana. Amazon says its Sequoia system can identify and store items up to 75 percent faster, while the DeepFleet suite of AI foundation models helps anticipate robot congestion. CFO Brian Olsavsky said in July that Amazon expected to more than double its robotic-arm fleet this year; the company told Ars that the current number is in the single-digit thousands.

why it matters

The development matters for Amazon’s operating model because automation is being used to raise warehouse speed while the company still depends on a very large human workforce. It also keeps labor conditions and workplace safety central to the economic impact of deploying robots alongside employees.

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