Microsoft offered 60,000 staff, about a quarter of its workforce, money to leave. It says AI is not the reason.
Microsoft announced the Voluntary Exit Offer on 26 October.
It covers staff at level 70 and below, up to vice president, in participating teams in the US, Canada, the UK and India. The window closes on 31 December.
Microsoft told The Register it has no target number. It does not call the offer a buyout, it said, since "no one is being incentivized to leave." Chief people officer Amy Coleman wrote that the offer gives teams "another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs." Microsoft told The Register that phrase is not code for AI.
The Register did the arithmetic on Google's similar offer in 2025, which three to five percent of eligible staff took. At that rate, 1,800 to 3,000 Microsoft employees could accept.
Microsoft had about 223,000 staff in June and has cut about 4,800 roles since. In April an early-retirement offer went to about 9,000 people.
Our reading: the offer reaches 60,000 people. On Google's take-up rate, the exits would number in the low thousands, and Microsoft declined to say which teams take part.
Sources
Our file on Microsoft
- 30 Oct
Microsoft's GitHub said AI agents wrote first drafts of over 40% of code change requests in September. In March it was 17%.
- 30 Oct
Microsoft is borrowing at least $25 billion, Bloomberg reported. Its CFO says cloud demand still exceeds what Microsoft can supply.
- 30 Oct
OpenAI's Codex and Microsoft's VS Code are still unpatched, researchers say. They found security flaws in five AI coding tools.
- 29 Oct
Microsoft says Canada Goose cut its month-end close to five days from eight. It had used old software and Excel.
- 29 Oct
Microsoft said Copilot users grew 50% quarter on quarter. CIOs still owe finance a justification for each paid seat.
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