Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees amid AI investments

Microsoft has extended voluntary buyout offers to approximately 60,000 employees across its U.S., Canadian, Indian, and U.K. offices, according to recent reports. The affected staff members are those with scores of 70 or lower on Microsoft's internal experience scale, which typically includes senior employees up to the level of vice presidents.

This voluntary buyout program grants workers advanced notice of potential layoffs, allowing those who choose to leave early to receive more favorable severance packages compared to traditional restructuring initiatives. Employees who accept the offer have until early December to accept the offer and will depart by the end of the month.

Some marketing, sales, and engineering teams have declined the offer, but it remains unclear which specific business units will face job cuts. It is believed that the loss-making Xbox video game division may be among the impacted groups. Microsoft employees with a score of 64 or lower on its experience scale will receive one week of pay for every six months of service, while those at levels 65 to 67 will be offered two weeks of pay.

Additionally, these employees will receive stock vesting for six to twelve months, continued healthcare coverage for a limited time, and outplacement support. Microsoft's CEO, Amy Coleman, emphasized that the company is learning from this new voluntary exit offer while continuing to focus on critical work and helping employees build new skills or find new opportunities within the company.

The layoffs come despite strong financial results in the most recent quarter, with Microsoft reporting an 18% year-over-year revenue growth to $90.01 billion and adjusted earnings of $4.74 per share, which exceeded estimates by more than 12%. The layoffs may be a strategic move to allocate more resources for Microsoft's data center expansion efforts.

The company opened 31 new data centers in the previous quarter, more than half of its total cloud facilities at the beginning of the year. Microsoft anticipates spending $175 million on capital expenditures by the end of 2026, down from the previously projected $190 billion in April but still significantly higher than its 2025 spending.

Recently, Microsoft unveiled its inference accelerator, Maia 300, which the company claims delivers 40% more tokens per megawatt compared to leading graphics cards, making it the primary source of inference capacity.