Microsoft is giving an enormous swath of its workforce an easy out – if they want it.
Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman on Monday announced that it would extend a voluntary exit offer to eligible employees, allowing them to transition out of the company with financial support. Coleman framed the buyout offer as a way for Microsoft workers “considering a future outside the company” to make that move now, helpfully reducing the tech giant’s costly headcount in the process.
At Microsoft, 60,000 workers are expected to receive the offer – over 25% of the company’s total workforce. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman wrote in the memo to staff, also shared on the company’s blog. “We’ll learn from it.” Employees based in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the U.S. on participating teams received details about the buyout on Monday morning via email.
“Participation varies based on each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs,” Coleman wrote. Employees who work in Microsoft units including AI experiences, Copilot, human resources, finance, Windows and Devices, and Xbox will be eligible for the buyout, according to a report from Reuters, while workers in security, marketing, and commercial business won’t. Fast Company reached out to Microsoft for additional details on the buyout offer.
Microsoft is eager to reduce the size of its sprawling global workforce, which totaled 223,000 full-time employees this summer. Like its peers, the tech giant has been on an epic AI spending spree, splashing out big on artificial intelligence chips and data centers. In 2026 alone, Microsoft projects $175 billion in capital expenditures, a mind-boggling sum driven by its huge bets on AI.
This is the second time the company has offered buyouts this year, after a much smaller round of offers went out to around 9,000 U.S. employees in April. Those buyouts, the first in its more than 50 year history, were extended to eligible employees at the senior director level or above whose age and years of employment added up to 70 or higher. Microsoft also cut around 4,800 workers over the summer, mostly eliminating positions in its commercial sales and Xbox divisions.
“… 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,” Coleman wrote. “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.”