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

Microsoft has started offering voluntary buyouts to about a quarter of its workforce, with roughly 60,000 employees in the U.S., Canada, India and the U.K. in scope. The company says the affected workers all score 70 or below on its internal experience scale, which means the most senior people hit are vice presidents.

This isn’t a standard layoff notice. Employees have until early December to accept, and those who do will leave later that month. Microsoft is promising more generous severance than a normal restructuring would usually bring, including stock vesting for six to 12 months, some continued health coverage and outplacement help.

The company hasn’t said which business units are in the crosshairs, though some marketing, sales and engineering teams are said to be staying put. Xbox looks vulnerable. Microsoft cut 1,600 people from that division in June, and reporting at the time pointed to more layoffs ahead.

The move lands even as Microsoft keeps posting strong numbers. Revenue rose 18% year over year in the three months ended June to $90.01 billion, and adjusted earnings of $4.74 per share beat expectations by more than 12%. But the company is still making room for a huge data center buildout, which seems to be where the money is going.

Microsoft opened 31 new data centers last quarter, more than half the number it had at the start of the year. It now expects to end 2026 with $175 million in capital expenditures, down from the $190 billion it projected by April, though still above its 2025 spending. The company has also been leaning harder on custom chips, including Maia 300, its new inference accelerator, which it says delivers 40% more tokens per megawatt than leading graphics cards. Microsoft says Maia will become its main source of inference capacity.