Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees as the company looks to control expenses while pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence infrastructure.
In a memo released on Monday, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer Amy Colman said the buyout program gives eligible workers an opportunity to leave the company with financial support.
“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,” Coleman wrote in the memo.
The buyouts are available to certain employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom at Microsoft’s internal employment level 70 and below. Some sales, engineering and corporate teams are excluded from the program.
Eligible employees have until early December to accept the offers, with departures scheduled for December 31. Microsoft said the compensation packages will be similar to its standard severance arrangements, though specific terms will vary. The company did not set a target for how many employees it wants to leave.
Employees who qualify will receive individual offers outlining their compensation and access to career planning resources. Microsoft said it has no plans to offer another round of voluntary buyouts in the near future.
The buyout program follows a voluntary retirement initiative offered earlier this year to approximately 9,000 workers, about one-third of whom accepted. Microsoft subsequently announced plans in July to eliminate another 4,800 jobs.
Microsoft employed around 223,000 people worldwide before Monday’s announcement.
The workforce changes come as Microsoft faces mounting costs from its expansion into artificial intelligence, including new data centers and computing infrastructure used to support its own products and cloud customers like OpenAI and Anthropic.
Microsoft reported $19.64 billion in free cash flow during the second quarter, down 23 percent from the prior year, proving out some of the financial pressure associated with those investments. The company is expected to disclose its third quarter earnings report on Wednesday.
