# Microsoft offers buyouts to 60,000 staff, a quarter of its workforce

URL: https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/blog/microsoft-offers-buyouts-to-60-000-staff-a-quarter-of-its-workforce
Published: 2026-10-26
Author: Roman Aglaganov, Full-stack developer
Category: Industry
Region: North America
Tags: work

> Employees up to vice-president level on many teams in the US, Canada, India and the UK can take a voluntary exit offer. Microsoft is spending heavily on AI data centres and wants to protect its finances while it does.

![Illustration: a large grid of small grey figures as dots, with a band of them fading out towards an open doorway, and one red dot at the door](https://ai-pulse.aglaganova.com/api/media/file/microsoft-buyouts-1.png)

Microsoft said on 26 October that it is offering voluntary buyouts to employees in the US, Canada, India and the UK. About 60,000 people are eligible, roughly 27% of its 223,000 staff, according to a person familiar with the matter quoted by CNBC. The company confirmed the figure to TechCrunch.

## The offer

It is open to employees at level 70 and below in Microsoft’s ranking, which goes up to vice-president, on participating teams. Bloomberg reported that divisions including Xbox, Windows, Copilot and Finance are taking part, while some sales, marketing, data-centre and engineering teams are not. Staff must decide in early December and those who accept leave on 31 December. A spokesperson said the terms are comparable to Microsoft’s standard severance package.

“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,” Amy Coleman, the chief people officer, wrote in a memo. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” she added. “We’ll learn from it.”

## The AI backdrop

Microsoft is spending heavily on data centres to serve AI demand from customers including OpenAI and Anthropic; it said its capital spending for the September quarter would exceed $50 billion. CNBC reports that the company wants to make the shift without weakening its finances. A Microsoft spokesperson told the Seattle station KUOW that AI is not driving the buyouts.

This follows a voluntary retirement offer in April, taken by more than 30% of the roughly 8,750 eligible US staff, and 4,800 layoffs announced in July. CNBC’s source said there is no target for how many people take the new offer.

## Why it matters

A buyout is gentler than a layoff, but the scale is striking: a quarter of one of the world’s biggest software companies has been invited to leave. Whatever Microsoft says about the cause, the pattern across big tech is the same: record spending on AI infrastructure, and pressure to pay for it by spending less on people.

## Sources

- [CNBC: Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees as AI leads to efficiency push](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/10/26/microsoft-msft-voluntary-buyouts.html)
- [TechCrunch: Microsoft offers buyouts to around 60,000 employees](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/26/microsoft-offers-buyouts-to-around-60000-employees-reports-say/)
- [KUOW: Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to a quarter of its workforce](https://www.kuow.org/technology/2026-10-26/microsoft-offers-voluntary-buyouts-to-a-quarter-of-its-workforce)