Microsoft's 60,000-Employee Buyout Plan Leaves Some Teams Out

By Nathan Brooks

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to as many as 60,000 employees across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and India, part of a workforce of roughly 223,000. The program offers Microsoft a route to trim staffing without another round of layoffs, but the 60,000 figure is a ceiling, not a confirmed reduction.

In a message to employees, chief people officer Amy Coleman wrote that the offer gives workers “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.” The company also expects to help those who remain focus on priority work, build skills and consider internal opportunities.

Which teams are covered?

People familiar with the situation told The Verge that employees across several groups qualify for the voluntary exit offers. Their reported status is uneven:

• Employees in AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources are eligible.
• Microsoft’s cloud + AI and MicrosoftAI teams, plus parts of corporate, external and legal affairs, are only partially participating.
• Employees in marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security are not participating.

The commercial exclusions matter. The offer does not target commercial sales, and it reaches AI and cloud functions rather than restricting itself to one product group. Available details give no count for each participating team.

How does this differ from the earlier retirement program?

This voluntary exit offer is distinct from the voluntary retirement program Microsoft offered earlier this year. That earlier program covered around 9,000 US employees at a certain employee level whose combined years of service and age totaled 70 or more.

The new offer has more than six times the potential headcount of the retirement program and spans four countries. It also applies to a wider set of teams, including Xbox and several AI groups. The new offer changes both scale and mechanism.

How does this sit with earlier layoffs?

The buyout offer comes only months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 employees, mainly in Xbox and commercial sales. It follows a confirmed reduction already concentrated in two commercial organizations.

Fortune reported that Xbox CEO Asha Sharma plans additional rounds of layoffs. The voluntary offer includes Xbox but excludes commercial sales, so the two actions have different scopes. A voluntary exit program and targeted job cuts can proceed at the same time. Available information gives no timetable or department count for the reported Xbox layoffs.

What did Coleman tell employees?

Coleman described the program as a new management tool and said its results would guide future decisions:

“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it.”

“At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”

“There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we’re trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.”

Her message places retention, skills and internal mobility alongside headcount reduction. It does not resolve the uneven exposure created by partial participation across several groups.

What remains unresolved?

Microsoft has not disclosed an acceptance deadline, severance formula, budget, expected acceptance rate or final reduction target. The 60,000 number therefore marks the maximum scale of the offer, while 4,800 is the count of employees Microsoft previously laid off. The 223,000 workforce figure remains approximate.

For AI, cloud and gaming operations, the practical issue is organizational capacity: whether teams can absorb voluntary departures while Xbox faces possible further cuts. The offer does not shield AI roles as a category. AI experiences, Copilot and CoreAI are eligible groups, while cloud + AI and MicrosoftAI have partial exposure.

The next measure will be the net headcount change across AI, cloud and Xbox, because that will show how much organizational capacity remains after voluntary departures and any additional targeted cuts. Without acceptance data and details of the new layoffs, the program’s effect on execution remains unresolved.