Amazon to close China-based AI research lab
July 23 (UPI) -- Amazon will shut down its AI research lab in a cost-cutting move as tensions flare with China and as other global companies seek to leave the nation because of Chinese influence.
The Shanghai-based Amazon Web Services announced job layoffs last week while as the conglomerate shutters its artificial intelligence and development wing.
The closures were first reported by The Financial Times.
It was due to "strategic adjustments amid U.S.-China tensions," an applied scientist at the lab, Wang Minjie, wrote on WeChat early this week as Amazon disbanded the team.
It was not immediately clear how many people or jobs were affected.
The Shanghai facility was established in 2018 to focus on areas such as machine learning and processing natural language.
In a statement, company spokesman Brad Glasser said Amazon "made the difficult business decision to eliminate some roles across particular teams" in its AWS division.
Meanwhile, a growing number of American corporate giants, like Microsoft and IBM, have opted to either downsize or end operations in China as geopolitical tensions rise exasperated by U.S. President Donald Trump's fluctuating tariff policies.
It came the same day McKinsey & Company, a large U.S. defense contractor, also revealed it was pulling back its own AI base in China as companies look to other nations such as India.
About 300 India-based Chinese workers at FoxConn, Apple's main iPhone producer, were ordered to return home earlier this month by Chinese authorities as Apple looks elsewhere, too, for its business operations.
Amazon has been actively retreating from China in recent years, going so far in 2019 to shut down the e-commerce giant's Chinese marketplace.
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