Microsoft Offers Voluntary Buyouts to Quarter of Workforce
Microsoft has announced voluntary buyout offers for approximately 25% of its workforce, aiming to optimize staffing structures amid AI-driven organizational shifts. This large-scale restructuring reflects tech giants' urgent need for cost control and efficiency in the generative AI era.
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Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to a quarter of its workforce
KUOW | By Monica Nickelsburg
Published October 26, 2026 at 10 AM PDT
KUOW Photo/Monica Nickelsburg
Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Wash.
Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees in an effort to further reduce its headcount.
Chief People Officer Amy Coleman sent a memo to employees Monday detailing the terms of the voluntary exit offer, which will be available to roughly one quarter of Microsoft’s workforce.
“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Hood said in the memo. “It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs.”
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The buyouts will be available to select employees in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and India at level 70 and below in the company’s ranking system. That ceiling applies to the vice president level at the company.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the offer will be comparable to the company’s standard severance package, which varies by market but typically includes base pay for a certain amount of time (based on tenure), stock options granted over time, health care, and career planning services.
The exit offer comes a few months after Microsoft offered voluntary early retirement to employees of a certain tenure at level 67 and below. About 30% of eligible employees took that offer, though Microsoft expects this broader round of buyouts to have a smaller adoption rate. That’s, in part, because the voluntary retirement program offered more generous terms to incentivize uptake.
Eligibility for the new program was determined by the heads of each organization at Microsoft. That means the sales organization, some corporate services like marketing, and some engineering teams will not be participating.
The spokesperson said artificial intelligence is not driving the buyout programs. Microsoft has, however, been on an employee-cutting spree for several years as it invests billions of dollars into the infrastructure needed to train and run AI models.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. … There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee,” Hood said in the memo. “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.”
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Monica Nickelsburg covers artificial intelligence, tech and the local economy in the Pacific Northwest.
See stories by Monica Nickelsburg
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