Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees, 27% of Staff, as AI Spending Tops $700 Billion
The company's first-ever Voluntary Exit Offer covers workers in the U.S., Canada, India and the U.K. as data center costs push up chip, memory and power prices.
Microsoft has offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, roughly 27 percent of its global workforce, in one of the largest such moves by a technology company as it pours money into artificial intelligence.
The offer, which the company calls a Voluntary Exit Offer, was announced Monday by Chief People Officer Amy Coleman in a blog post. It is open to eligible employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States. "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us," Coleman wrote. Microsoft had about 223,000 full-time employees at the end of June, according to its filings.
The scale is far beyond what the company had discussed before. In May, two people familiar with the plan said Microsoft intended to offer buyouts to about 8,750 U.S. employees, about 7 percent of its U.S. workforce. In July, the company said it was cutting 4,800 jobs, about 2.1 percent of its global workforce, with many of the cuts in its Xbox business.
The reason is the cost of the AI buildout. Spending on AI data centers is likely to top $700 billion across the industry this year. That investment has pushed up the prices of memory chips, processors and electricity, and economists expect it to keep adding to inflation at least through the end of the year.
Microsoft has been moving toward AI-first products since 2024, when it introduced AI-enabled PCs with its Copilot assistant built into Windows. In October 2025 it added Mico, a floating cartoon face that represents Copilot. The company was due to report quarterly results Wednesday. Its shares reached an all-time high earlier this month and rose about 1 percent on Monday.
A buyout differs from a layoff because employees choose whether to take it, but the sheer size of the offer signals how much the company wants to reshape its payroll around AI. The company has not said how many workers it expects to accept, or what the terms are for employees in each country. Companies often use voluntary programs to reduce headcount without forcing exits, and then turn to involuntary cuts if too few people leave.
The announcement lands as Wall Street weighs whether the AI spending boom can be sustained. Alphabet fell 13 percent last week after disappointing results, and investors are watching closely for any sign that the largest spenders are trimming costs elsewhere to pay for chips and data centers. For Microsoft's workers, the question is simpler: whether to stay at a company that has told a quarter of its staff it would pay them to go.
