Amazon on Wednesday unveiled a new robotic system that’s capable of performing multiple tasks at once in the company’s warehouses.

The system, called Blue Jay, is made up of a series of robotic arms that are suspended from a conveyor belt-like track. Those arms are tipped with suction-cup devices that allow them to grab items of varying shapes and sizes.

Blue Jay combines “what used to be three separate robotic stations into one streamlined workplace that can pick, sort, and consolidate in a single place,” Amazon said in a blog.

The robotic system’s goal is to assist employees with otherwise strenuous tasks “while creating greater efficiency in less physical space,” the company said.

Amazon is testing Blue Jay at one of its warehouses in South Carolina. So far, the company has observed that the system is able to pick, pack, stow and consolidate “approximately 75% of items we store at our sites.”

Blue Jay joins a growing fleet of robotic machinery being deployed across Amazon’s legions of warehouses. Over the past several years, Amazon has debuted robots capable of handling different tasks, ranging from removing items from shelves to sorting boxes. In May, it debuted “Vulcan,” a robotic system that has a sense of touch.

Amazon’s warehouse automation efforts were largely jumpstarted by its $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems in 2012.

The announcement comes as Amazon’s warehouse automation has come under growing scrutiny, particularly over how the technology is impacting its sprawling frontline workforce.

The New York Times on Tuesday published an investigation showing that Amazon’s automation team expects that it can avoid hiring more than 160,000 people in the U.S. by 2027, amounting to savings of about 30 cents on every item that Amazon packs and delivers. The report was based on interviews and internal strategy documents, the Times said.

In response to the report, an Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the documents offer an “incomplete and misleading picture of our plans.”

“In this instance, the materials appear to reflect the perspective of just one team and don’t represent our overall hiring strategy across our various operations business lines — now or moving forward,” the spokesperson said in an email.

As the nation’s second-largest private employer, Amazon’s automation playbook could become a bellwether for the broader job market and other corporations. The company had more than 1.54 million employees globally at the end of the second quarter. That figure excludes delivery drivers, which are contracted through third-party firms.

The company on Wednesday said that employees remain “at the center” of its robotics development. Amazon said its goal is to “reduce physically demanding tasks, simplify decisions and open new career opportunities” for workers.

Amazon has sought to highlight how increasing automation in its facilities will lead to employees adopting “more rewarding” roles within the company. It offers an apprenticeship program in mechatronics and robotics, which involves honing skills around maintaining and monitoring robotic machinery.

WATCH: Meet Vulcan, Amazon’s new stowing robot that can feel what it touches

Applied Digital said on Wednesday that it signed a $5 billion infrastructure lease agreement with a U.S. hyperscaler.

Shares of the data center company dropped more than 7% following the announcement, continuing a recent slumped that’s sent the stock down over 20% in the past week. The stock has still almost quadrupled this year.

The lease announced on Wednesday is for about 15 years and will deliver 200 megawatts of capacity at the company’s Polaris Forge 2 campus in North Dakota. It brings the company’s total leased capacity to 600 megawatts at its two Polaris Forge campuses.

Across the tech industry, the major cloud providers and other internet giants are rapidly investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure and announcing plans for massive new data centers to handle an expected surge in demand. Applied Digital didn’t name its partner for the latest agreement, just disclosing that it’s an “investment grade hyperscaler.”

In an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” CEO Wes Cummins said the five U.S. hyperscalers are Microsoft, Meta, Oracle, Amazon and Google, “so that’s really who we’re targeting.” He said the tenant for the first lease was CoreWeave.

“We started down this path a couple years ago and we stubbed our toe a few times, but I think we’ve really dialed in the process of the ability to build at scale,” Cummins said, adding that the company has a 4 gigawatt “active pipeline.”

In June, Applied Digital announced two long-term lease agreements with CoreWeave for 250 megawatts of capacity. The company said it expects $7 billion in rental revenue over 15 years, and the shares soared 48% on that news.

Applied Digital also secured $5 billion in infrastructure funding from Macquarie Asset Management earlier this month.

“We believe Polaris Forge 2 builds on that momentum, reflecting the strength of our partnerships and the speed at which we’re reshaping the AI infrastructure landscape,” Cummins said in Wednesday’s release.

At around the same time Accenture announced its investment in data labeling startup Snorkel AI to power its financial services clients in August, the startup announced it was laying off about 13% of its staff.

It wasn’t alone.

When Meta took a massive stake in Scale AI in June, the deal was billed as a sign of confidence in the fast-growing data-labeling company. It was also the catalyst that resulted in laying off 14% of its staff. Windsurf, a coding AI startup, offered buyouts to all of its employees after a failed OpenAI acquisition attempt. Once Cognition acquired the company, it laid off 30 staffers and was offering buyouts, according to The Information. HP‘s acquisition of AI pin company Humane led to some staffers receiving 30% to 70% increases in pay, according to Techcrunch – and layoffs immediately for others.

The trend isn’t slowing down, either.

On Wednesday, Meta laid off 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit, with Meta’s Chief AI Officer (and Scale AI founder) Alexandr Wang announcing the layoffs in a memo to staff.

As big technology companies double down on artificial intelligence by acquiring or investing in nimble startups, the workforces of those smaller companies are often the first to feel the impact. With Wall Street scrutinizing investments, instead of an eye towards keeping the startup culture and keeping employees happy, it’s turning into quickly eliminating duplicate functions. 

“In the past, there would have been more concessions made to culture, to continuity, to that sort of thing,” said JP Gowinder, Forrester vice president and principal analyst. “That’s just not where we are. Big Tech is all about cutting to the very minimum viable staff for a variety of reasons.”

Accenture, Meta, Cognition and HP did not respond to requests for comment.

While job losses after mergers are nothing new, the way tech giants are handling these AI-driven acquisitions feels different. Part of the disruption stems from the fact that large tech firms are still recalibrating their workforces after years of pandemic-era hiring. 

“As these big tech companies continue to pivot towards growth and that growth is generally driven by AI, they are going to shed lower growth or non-core assets, whether they divest them, they wind them down, or they restructure them,” said Malinda Gentry, EY-Parthenon Americas leader for the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) industry. “That is going to result in needing less of that workforce or creating a more streamlined and efficient workforce.” 

“What you’re seeing now in the workforce and the adjustments you’re seeing is driven by the rapid pace of AI,” Gentry said. 

Startup exits and career endgames

The World Economic Forum estimates AI could eliminate 80 to 85 million jobs worldwide over the next three years, while creating as many as 170 million new ones. The challenge for tech workers is finding a place in the meantime while the industry shifts towards a more AI-enabled workforce. Startups in the space offer flashy offers and opportunities for future career growth, but with many of these companies eyeing exits as the final endgame, it also creates job volatility. 

Startups are less likely to be preserved as stand-alone units and more likely to be streamlined into big tech’s existing operations. This is occurring within a labor market where job seekers have long since lost the Covid era “job hopping” edge.

“When you buy a company, if you get rid of people who are at the company – unless you bought it purely for the IP or for the customer – you don’t really want to get rid of the talent in general,” Forrester’s Gowinder said. “But it is such an employer’s market at the moment, what are people going to do?”

The pace of AI development is another driver of workforce churn. The move towards AI has made many tech companies bet not only that they won’t need entry level jobs, but also rethink the employee structure of their companies and placing a larger emphasis on senior roles.

“They’re moving toward a flatter organizational model, where they’re getting rid of middle management layers,” Gowinder said. “So a lot of the layoffs happen at that middle management layer. It’s a bet that technology, like collaboration technology and very clear product development life cycles, are just removing the need for extra layers of management.”

For employees, startups used to dangle the carrot of being able to grow with new technology and reap the benefits of being acquired by a larger giant. But now, many employees view it as a risk. The uncertainty could change how AI startups recruit. Contracts may begin to include stronger guarantees of equity or severance in the event of an acquisition, as workers grow wary of being left behind in a deal.

“The implication of this ‘buy and liquidate the staff’ is sort of troubling,” Gowinder said. “It may make it a little harder for some of these startups to hire the talent that they want, if the talent that they want is hoping to have a share in the spoils of this.”

Despite the turbulence, experts stress that layoffs don’t tell the whole story. For every downsizing announcement, there are also hiring pushes in areas tied to AI strategy. Big tech is still racing to secure scarce talent in machine learning, data science, and AI safety. There’s no turning back from an AI-powered tech workforce future. 

“There’s going to continue to be a trend in workforce reduction,” Gentry said. “But that is balanced with the ability to continue to grow and acquire talent, whether that talent is hired, acquired, or partnered with in the ecosystem.”