Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees — about a quarter of its global workforce — in the company's second effort this year to shrink its headcount as it pours money into AI infrastructure and data-center construction.
The voluntary exit offer, reported by CNBC and confirmed by the company, will be extended to qualifying staff in the United States, India, Canada and the United Kingdom who hold positions at job level 70 or below, covering the large majority of the company's workforce up to senior principal-level roles. Microsoft framed the offer as a chance for employees "who may have already been considering career moves outside Microsoft" to leave on favorable terms, without giving a specific reason tied to performance or financial pressure.
The second reduction this year
Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said the eligible organizations were chosen "based on each business's priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs." The offer follows a narrower voluntary retirement package extended to 8,750 long-tenured US employees in April, which Coleman said was accepted by about 30% of those eligible, softening the need for further layoffs at the time. In July, Microsoft's Xbox division cut 3,200 jobs, roughly a fifth of its gaming staff.
Unlike the April package, which targeted employees nearing the end of long careers, the new offer reaches a far larger pool across engineering, sales and other functions. Microsoft has not said how many of the roughly 60,000 eligible employees it expects — or wants — to accept.
The buyouts come as Microsoft, like its largest rivals, continues to commit tens of billions of dollars to AI data centers and chip capacity even as questions grow across the industry about when, or whether, that spending will be matched by comparable profit. The company has not linked the workforce reduction explicitly to AI investment, but it arrives in the same week that Anthropic filed for what could be the largest stock listing in history and Google DeepMind unveiled its latest AI model, underscoring how much capital and attention the sector continues to absorb.