Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to around 60,000 employees, Reuters reported on Monday, October 26, citing Business Insider and a company spokesperson. The offer covers eligible employees at level 70 and below in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and India — roughly 27 percent of Microsoft's 223,000-person workforce.

A source familiar with the matter told Reuters the offer reaches key divisions including AI experiences, Copilot, finance, human resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices, while excluding marketing, commercial business and security; reporting rounds added that the staff who run Microsoft's data centers cannot take it either. Microsoft called it a time-limited, voluntary program built on insights from a previous voluntary retirement program — in the spring it offered about 8,750 retirement-age workers a way out, and more than 30 percent took it.

The cost control lands alongside an enormous AI build-out: Reuters has linked it to a 2026 capital-expenditure forecast of about $175 billion, much of it for AI infrastructure. In other words, the company is asking tens of thousands of people in its product and support teams to consider leaving while ring-fencing the people who build and run the data centers its AI strategy depends on.