Microsoft opens voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees across four countries

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to as many as 60,000 employees, giving the company a way to reduce headcount without another round of forced layoffs. The Verge reported the scale of the program, and TechCrunch, citing Business Insider and Bloomberg, put the figure at around 60,000 as well.

Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced what the company is calling the Voluntary Exit Offer in a memo to staff on Monday. In the note, Coleman said the program gives eligible employees who may already be weighing a future outside the company "a new choice to make that transition now with support."

Who can take the offer

The program covers employees at the vice president level and below on select teams in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India, according to TechCrunch. Data center workers, along with sales and marketing staff, are excluded, those reports say.

According to The Verge, staff across a wide range of Microsoft organizations are eligible, including the AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance and human resources teams. Microsoft's Cloud + AI and Microsoft AI organizations, along with corporate, external and legal affairs, are participating only partially. Employees on the marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security teams are not participating at all.

Workers who accept the offer will receive benefits similar to a standard severance package, the reports cited by TechCrunch say.

Not Microsoft's first exit program

The Verge notes that the offer comes just months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 employees, cuts that fell mainly on the Xbox and commercial sales organizations. A Fortune report cited by The Verge says Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is planning new rounds of layoffs.

Monday's offer is also distinct from a voluntary retirement program Microsoft ran earlier this year for long-serving US employees. That earlier program was open to far fewer people — around 9,000 according to The Verge, or roughly 8,750 according to TechCrunch — and required an employee's age plus years of service to total at least 70. TechCrunch reports that more than 30 percent of eligible workers accepted that deal.

Coleman described the new program as untested ground for the company. "The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us," she wrote, according to The Verge. "We'll learn from it." She added that the company would keep helping people focus on the most important work, build new skills and find internal opportunities, and that "there is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee."

Microsoft did not immediately respond to TechCrunch's request for comment.

Why it matters

The scale of the offer — tens of thousands of employees across four countries and core product groups including Windows, Xbox and Copilot — signals how aggressively Microsoft is trying to reshape its workforce around AI. TechCrunch frames the buyouts explicitly as part of the company's effort to cut costs and rework its staff for an AI-first business.

Choosing voluntary exits over layoffs also carries practical advantages for Microsoft: it can soften the morale damage and public backlash of another forced round of cuts while still letting managers thin teams that no longer match the company's priorities. For employees, the offer provides financial support and career planning resources for those already planning to leave. The open question is what happens if too few people volunteer, particularly with Fortune reporting that further Xbox layoffs may already be under consideration — which would suggest the buyouts are one lever among several rather than a substitute for cuts.