Microsoft has offered voluntary exit packages to roughly 60,000 employees across the US, UK, Canada and India — about 27% of its workforce — as it absorbs record AI infrastructure spending.

Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India — roughly a quarter of its global workforce — in the largest voluntary exit program in the company's history.

The program, called the Voluntary Exit Offer, was announced in a memo to staff on Monday by chief people officer Amy Coleman. Eligible employees were due to receive terms by email the same day and have until the first week of December to decide, with those accepting scheduled to leave by Dec. 31.

What the package includes

The offer is equivalent to Microsoft's standard severance: base pay determined by tenure and level, continued stock vesting, healthcare coverage for a fixed period and career transition services. It does not include the extended healthcare coverage that was the main draw of the company's earlier retirement program.

There is no age or tenure requirement, and performance is not a factor. The offer extends up to level 70 on Microsoft's internal scale, which reaches general managers and some vice presidents but stops short of corporate vice presidents — making it markedly broader than the spring program.

"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support," Coleman wrote. She added that it gives participating organisations "another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs."

Why now

Microsoft is under pressure from investors to hold down operating expenses while funding an unprecedented build-out of AI infrastructure. Capital expenditures for the September quarter were expected to exceed $50 billion, against $34.9 billion in capital spending and finance leases a year earlier. The company supplies cloud capacity to Anthropic, OpenAI and a wide range of other customers.

The workforce stood at 223,000 full-time employees as of June 30, down from 228,000 a year earlier, according to annual filings. That figure predated the July cuts.

The timing follows a year of steady attrition. Microsoft eliminated 4,800 roles in July — about 2% of staff, including roughly 600 in Washington state — alongside a sweeping Xbox overhaul. Hundreds more followed in September as part of the same games division restructuring. The company cut more than 15,000 jobs in 2025.

In April, Microsoft ran its first-ever voluntary retirement program, open to about 7% of US employees. Roughly 30% of the 8,750 eligible US staff took the deal. Coleman said in July that the uptake reduced the size of that month's layoffs.

Not a substitute for layoffs

Microsoft says the new offer does not signal that it needs fewer employees, describing it instead as one of several ways it is adjusting to changing business conditions. The company also said the program is not a replacement for layoffs, which remain an option depending on business conditions.

That distinction matters for how the move should be read. Buyouts are relatively rare among the largest technology companies, which have generally used layoffs, stricter performance reviews and return-to-office mandates to shrink headcount. A buyout is cheaper in reputational terms and slower to execute, but it leaves the company less able to choose precisely which roles go.

Microsoft told GeekWire it expects a much smaller share of eligible staff to accept than the 30% who took the spring retirement offer — a reasonable expectation, given that this round is open to employees at the start of their careers as well as near retirement, and carries a less generous healthcare component.

What is not yet known

Microsoft has not disclosed how many departures it expects, nor whether the program will be repeated. Because acceptance is voluntary, the eventual reduction in headcount — and its cost — will not be clear until after the December deadline. Whether the offer forestalls a further round of involuntary cuts, or merely precedes one, is a question the company has left open.