Microsoft Offers Buyouts to Roughly 60,000 Employees

By Grace Kim

Microsoft is offering buyouts to roughly 60,000 employees, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday — one of the largest voluntary exit programs in its history and its latest move to cut costs and rework its workforce for the AI age.

The offer lands while Microsoft's headcount stands at 223,000 as of the end of June, meaning the program touches more than one in four of the company's employees. Business Insider first reported the news.

Who qualifies — and who doesn't?

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman sent employees a note about the buyouts, which Microsoft also published on its website. Employees at the vice president level and below on select teams in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom are eligible, according to the note.

Bloomberg reports that participating divisions include Xbox, Windows, Copilot and Finance. Some employees — including those working in data centers, sales and marketing — are excluded.

That exclusion list tells you where Microsoft still needs every hand it has: the physical infrastructure and the revenue engine behind its AI buildout.

What Microsoft actually said

The company framed the program as a matter of employee choice, not just cost-cutting. "The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter," the note to employees reads. "This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support."

Coleman's note also acknowledged the program is an experiment. "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us," it reads. "We'll learn from it. At the same time, 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. 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."

In plain terms: Microsoft is testing voluntary attrition as a management tool, and it's reserving the right to run it differently team by team.

How the deal works

Eligible employees received an email Monday with a link to their Voluntary Exit Offer details. The buyout's terms will be similar to Microsoft's standard severance package, the company said.

The structure gives Microsoft a way to shrink its workforce without the disruption of mass layoffs — and without the headlines that come with them.

Is this Microsoft's first buyout round?

No. Earlier this year, Microsoft offered buyouts to retirement-age employees. More than 30% of the roughly 8,750 eligible workers accepted — over 2,600 departures handled voluntarily.

That earlier round's acceptance rate may explain the scale of this one. If a similar share of the newly eligible 60,000 says yes, Microsoft could shed tens of thousands of positions without a single forced layoff.

What's the so-what?

The program covers select teams in four countries — the U.S., Canada, India and the U.K. — across divisions building everything from Windows to Copilot, Microsoft's flagship AI product line. That breadth matters: this isn't a cleanup of a legacy unit, it's a reshaping of the core business around AI-era priorities.

How many of the 60,000 eligible employees take the deal will set the shape of Microsoft's workforce — and possibly its next cost-cutting move — heading into the new fiscal year.