Amazon has committed $1 billion to Career Choice under Future Ready 2030, a $2.5 billion initiative to provide training for at least 50 million people.
Launched in October last year, Future Ready 2030 builds on Amazon’s workforce training programs, which began seven years ago.
The company said it had helped more than 700,000 employees worldwide gain new skills, exceeding its initial target of 100,000. This included 425,000 employees in the US.
“When you remove barriers to education, you create pathways that help people build the careers they want,” said Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior VP of people experience and technology.
Career Choice helps employees access education and training to advance their careers or move into other fields. More than 500,000 employees have participated since its launch in 2012. The program now operates in 16 countries, after expanding into Japan and Mexico this year.
The $1 billion commitment will fund training for another 500,000 employees in cybersecurity, software development, logistics, renewable energy and mechatronics.
Amazon has partnered with Stanford Online, Purdue University, Western Governors University and the SANS Technology Institute to offer professional credential programmes.
These are designed for employees who already hold bachelor’s degrees and want to move into fields such as clean energy, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, education and healthcare. Most programs take 18 months or less to complete.
Other initiatives include AWS Skill Builder, which offers more than 900 free courses and 220 AI and machine learning resources. Machine Learning University trains employees to develop AI solutions for Amazon, while free microcredentials include one focused on agentic AI. Amazon also pays for one AWS AI or machine learning certification exam per employee each year.
For students, Amazon Future Engineer and AWS Educate provide education and training programs. Over the past year, Amazon Future Engineer delivered more than 17 million hours of free computer science and robotics education to 1.1 million students in the US and awarded 200 scholarships to US high school seniors, worth up to $40,000 each.
“Whether someone dreams of working at Amazon, works here now, or has moved on to their next chapter, our goal is the same: Helping them have access to the education and training needed to thrive in whatever comes next,” Galetti said.
