Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees

JUST IN: Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 eligible employees across the US, UK, Canada and India as it balances its AI infrastructure build-out with cost cutting.

Microsoft just offered buyouts to sixty thousand of its own people.

It's a voluntary exit offer for employees in the US, UK, Canada and India, level 70 or below, which at Microsoft covers a huge chunk of the workforce. The company's framing it as flexibility, chief people officer Amy Coleman says it helps employees shape their next chapter. Translation, we'd like fewer salaries on the books, and we'd like you to volunteer.

The why isn't a mystery. Microsoft is pouring money into data centers to serve AI demand from Anthropic, OpenAI and everyone else, and that spending is squeezing the finances. Back in April it ran a voluntary retirement program for about seven percent of US staff. This is the sequel, and it's bigger.

So the pattern on my screen is simple. The machines are getting the budget, and the humans are getting the exit paperwork.

This is Sara White, reporting for HIT.