Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to as many as 60,000 employees in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and India. The program gives eligible workers financial support and career-planning resources as the company tries to reduce staffing without another immediate round of involuntary layoffs.
Eligibility reaches employees in AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows and Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources, according to sources cited by The Verge. Parts of the cloud and AI, MicrosoftAI, and legal and external-affairs organizations are participating. Marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security are excluded.
Microsoft says the offer is not based on age, tenure or performance. That distinguishes it from an earlier retirement program available to roughly 9,000 long-serving US employees whose age and years of service met a defined threshold. It also follows layoffs affecting 4,800 people, mainly in Xbox and commercial sales.
The company describes the new program as an experiment and says it may use similar offers where business and workforce needs justify them. Participation is voluntary, but the scale matters: Microsoft employs about 223,000 people, so the eligible pool covers more than a quarter of its workforce. The announcement does not say how many departures Microsoft expects or how offers vary by country and role.