Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to ~60,000 employees, nearly 27% of its workforce
RachelVT42 · x · 2026-10-27
A widely quoted post claims Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees — nearly 27% of its 223,000 global workforce — across the US, India, UK and Canada, including staff on the Copilot and AI Experiences teams. The author reads it as a sign that the AI infrastructure race is burning so much cash that Microsoft is shrinking payroll to protect cash flow.
Quoting author RachelVT42 offers a counterpoint: many near-retirement employees have little incentive to reskill late in their careers, so the buyout looks more like routine workforce restructuring than an anomaly.
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