Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees, a Quarter of Its Workforce

Microsoft has offered voluntary buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees — more than 25% of its total workforce — as the company works to shrink headcount while pouring capital into artificial intelligence.

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced the Voluntary Exit Offer on Monday in a memo to staff, also shared on the company's blog. She framed the buyout as a way for Microsoft workers "considering a future outside the company" to make that move now with financial support attached. "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us," Coleman wrote. "We'll learn from it."

Who gets the offer, and who does not?

Eligible employees based in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States received details by email on Monday morning. Reuters reported that the offer covers workers in several major units:

• AI experiences
• Copilot
• Human resources
• Finance
• Windows and Devices
• Xbox

Employees in security, marketing and the commercial business will not receive the offer. The uneven coverage is deliberate. "Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs," Coleman wrote.

The scale is unusual. A buyout offer reaching a quarter of a global workforce is rare even by the standards of an industry that has spent two years trimming payrolls.

Why is Microsoft paying people to leave?

The company wants to reduce the size of a workforce that totaled 223,000 full-time employees this summer. The buyout gives it a softer tool than layoffs: employees who want to leave can do so with money in hand, and Microsoft reduces headcount without forced cuts or severance fights.

The financial pressure behind the move is clear. Microsoft, like its peers, has been on a sustained AI spending spree, buying artificial intelligence chips and building data centers. In 2026 alone, the company projects $175 billion in capital expenditures — a sum driven largely by its AI bets. Every dollar spent on headcount competes directly with that buildout.

Is this the first time Microsoft has done this?

No. This is the second buyout round at Microsoft this year. In April, a much smaller round of offers went to around 9,000 U.S. employees. That program, the first in the company's more than 50-year history, was limited to eligible employees at the senior director level or above whose age plus years of employment added up to 70 or higher — effectively an early-retirement package.

Microsoft has also used outright cuts. Over the summer, the company eliminated around 4,800 jobs, mostly in its commercial sales and Xbox divisions.

The sequence matters. A retirement program, then layoffs, then a mass voluntary offer suggests a company managing down its workforce through multiple channels rather than a single dramatic restructuring.

What happens next?

Coleman signaled that Microsoft views the program as an experiment whose lessons will shape future workforce policy. "We'll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft," she wrote. "There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we're trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute."

How many of the 60,000 eligible employees accept will determine the real size of the reduction — and whether Microsoft needs a third round, or something blunter, to close the gap between its payroll and its $175 billion AI budget.