Microsoft is offering voluntary departures to around 60,000 of its employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India. This is the first time the group has presented an offer of this kind to such a large number of people, as part of a broader effort to reduce its operating costs and headcount without slowing its investments in AI infrastructure.
- Microsoft propose des départs volontaires à environ 60 000 employés aux États-Unis, au Royaume-Uni, au Canada et en Inde.
- L’entreprise veut réduire ses coûts et ses effectifs tout en maintenant ses investissements dans l’IA.
- Satya Nadella prévoit moins d’employés, mieux payés, disposant de davantage de GPU par chercheur.
- Les effectifs ont baissé pour la première fois en dix ans, et de nouveaux licenciements pourraient suivre.
This voluntary departure offer significantly expands the retirement offer made earlier this year, which was limited to about 9,000 employees.
A Strategy Linked to AI
The link to AI was articulated by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a podcast nearly two years ago, in response to a question about AI’s impact on headcount. ‘Our total people costs will go down, my cost per head will go up, and my number of GPUs per researcher will go up,’ he said. GPUs, or graphics processing units, are the chips used to train and run AI models. In short, Microsoft will have fewer employees but will offer them higher salaries as well as more tools and computing power.
These departures are part of a series of job cuts. Microsoft has been regularly laying off staff for a decade, but in recent years, layoffs and executive departures have taken on notable scale and now occur every few months. The current offer follows job cuts of 4,800 positions a few months ago, which primarily affected Xbox teams and commercial sales teams.
Declining Headcount
For the first time in ten years, Microsoft’s overall headcount has decreased year-over-year. The group has about 223,000 people as of June 30, which is 5,000 fewer than the 228,000 employees it had in 2025. It had already laid off 4% of its workforce last year.
According to sources close to the matter, the offer is practically identical to Microsoft’s usual departure terms: a cash sum calculated based on seniority, accelerated stock vesting, subsidized supplemental health coverage, and several months of career transition services.
Over 30% of the 9,000 eligible employees accepted the retirement offer earlier this year, but the acceptance rate is expected to be much lower for the new offer. Even if only 5% of the affected employees accept, that would represent 3,000 people. They have until December to decide, and rumors suggest new layoffs in November and January.
Some, both inside and outside the company, believe Microsoft needs these reductions. Merill Fernando, former Microsoft Entra product lead, states: ‘Microsoft needs fewer employees. I’ve been on the inside. I’ve seen how things get built. Lots of small organizations, layers upon layers, silos everywhere.’ According to him, each organization within the company ‘had its own priorities and its own decision-makers,’ which would make collective action difficult.
Satya Nadella himself addressed the topic last year in a podcast with Stripe co-founder John Collison. He acknowledged that the meme depicting Microsoft divisions aiming at each other defined the company’s cultural narrative ‘more than the reality,’ while pointing to real internal tensions. ‘Some tensions between divisions are real problems that need to exist. Social cohesion is not a goal, winning in the marketplace is.’
The number of employees who accept the offer is expected to influence the company’s next round of job cuts.
