Microsoft Offers Voluntary Buyouts to About 60,000 Staff as It Balances AI Spending

Microsoft said on Monday that it is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 of its employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce. The company is trying to trim costs while it pours money into artificial intelligence.

The offer covers staff on select teams in the United States, Canada, India and Britain, at vice president level and below, according to a Microsoft spokesperson. Some groups are left out, among them some employees who work on data centres and some in sales and marketing. Around 27 percent of the workforce is eligible.

In a memo to staff, Amy Coleman, an executive vice president and the company's chief people officer, described the Voluntary Exit Offer as part of how Microsoft is evolving its approach to change. She said it creates greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter.

This is the second voluntary offer Microsoft has made this year. In April, the company reportedly offered around seven percent of its US workforce the option of retiring early. According to CNBC, about 30 percent of those eligible took it. Regulatory filings show Microsoft had 223,000 employees worldwide at the end of June, down from 228,000 at the end of 2025. The company is expected to report quarterly earnings later this week.

The announcement lands in a crowded season for tech job cuts. Netflix will reportedly cut around 6 percent of its workforce, or 1,000 jobs, according to US media reports last week. eBay laid off 1,000 employees earlier this month, after a previous round this year that affected 800. Uber said in September it would lay off around 10 percent of its staff, an estimated 3,000 or more people. Amazon announced 16,000 global job cuts in January. Microsoft itself cut nearly 5,000 jobs in July, heavily concentrated in its Xbox gaming division.

Meta's year has been similar. In April it said it would cancel plans to hire an additional 6,000 people and move 7,000 other employees into roles tied to AI workflows. In May it laid off around 10 percent of its global workforce, about 8,000 people. Concern about what AI will do to jobs persists, and even industry insiders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned of mass job losses.

The spending behind it is enormous. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are collectively on track to put roughly $700 billion into AI data centres, chips and computing infrastructure this year alone. In July, Microsoft said it spent $41 billion between April and June and expected to raise that to $50 billion for July through September. It also lowered its forecast for total spending in the 2026 calendar year to $175 billion, from $190 billion previously.

Chief financial officer Amy Hood told analysts that around two-thirds of the spending goes to short-lived assets, specifically chips, driven by customer demand for both AI and non-AI infrastructure.

This week's earnings report is the next checkpoint. It may show how many employees take the offer, and whether the trimmed spending forecast points to further changes in headcount.