Microsoft Opens Voluntary Buyouts to a Quarter of Its Staff While AI Spending Soars
Microsoft opened voluntary buyouts to about a quarter of its staff, up to vice president level, and they have until early December to decide. The memo never says AI, but the $175 billion capex forecast says plenty.
One memo, and more than a quarter of Microsoft can start drafting a goodbye email. On Monday the company opened a Voluntary Exit Offer to staff in the US, Canada, India and the UK, and the eligible pool is enormous: around 60,000 people, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to CNBC on condition of anonymity. That number counts employees who are eligible to take the buyout, not people expected to leave. Against Microsoft's headcount of 223,000, it works out to about 27% of the company.
These are voluntary buyouts, and Microsoft is leaning hard on that word. Nobody is being shown the door. But the timing tells its own story. The offer lands two days before quarterly earnings, in a year when the company has already run a retirement buyout, announced 4,800 job cuts in July and kept pouring record sums into data centers.
Chief People Officer Amy Coleman framed it as a choice, not a cull, in a memo Microsoft published on its official blog.
"This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs." Amy Coleman, Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, Microsoft
Read that second sentence again. The first is about employees. The second is about the org chart.
The memo itself never mentions AI. The outlets reporting the story drew that line themselves. Reuters, in a report carried by NBC News, said the buyouts are meant to contain costs and help fund Microsoft's massive AI investments, and noted the company has forecast $175 billion in capital expenditures for calendar 2026. CNBC described the move as Microsoft trying to balance a costly AI infrastructure build out with capital efficiency, and reported that spending for the September quarter alone should top $50 billion, against $34.9 billion a year earlier. It is the same build out behind the company's push to triple its AI data center capacity. The servers are getting the raise. The people are getting a severance calculator.
The offer covers employees at level 70 and below, which reaches up to vice president, according to the person who briefed CNBC. That is a step up from April's Voluntary Retirement Program, which went no higher than senior director. Not every team is in. A Reuters source said eligible groups include AI experiences, Copilot, finance, human resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices, while marketing, commercial business and security are excluded. The Seattle Times, citing an internal memo screenshot, reported that Microsoft's AI, legal and cloud teams are only partially participating.
The terms, per a Microsoft spokesperson speaking to Fortune, follow standard separation packages and vary by country. In the US that means at least eight weeks of pay, continued stock vesting, healthcare and career services, with severance scaled to tenure. Employees must decide by early December and those who accept leave on December 31.
The real number to watch
Sixty thousand is the headline. The take rate is the story. Asked how many people Microsoft expects to accept, the spokesperson pointed Fortune to similar programs at other big tech companies that saw 3% to 5% uptake. Applied to 60,000, that would be somewhere around 1,800 to 3,000 departures. Microsoft has no target this time, the CNBC source said. Its last attempt went far beyond that benchmark: more than 30% of those eligible for the retirement program took it, Microsoft said in July.
Coleman was unusually candid about the experiment.
"The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We'll learn from it." Amy Coleman, Microsoft
Investors will be learning too. Microsoft reports results after the close on Wednesday, and the question hanging over every AI spender is whether the returns justify the bill. A voluntary buyout is the gentlest tool a company has for trimming payroll. If enough people take it, Microsoft gets leaner without the headlines that come with cuts. If too few do, the gentle tool may not stay the only one on the table.
