Microsoft Offers Buyouts to 60,000 Employees

Microsoft is offering voluntary exit packages to around 60,000 employees across India, the US, the UK, and Canada, giving eligible staff the option to leave the company with financial support and career-planning resources.

Announced on October 26, the Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) is available to employees at internal job level 70 and below in participating organisations. The programme covers roughly 27% of Microsoft's global workforce of 223,000.

The tech and AI company did not disclose how many of the 23,000 employees in India are affected. 

Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman said in a blog post that eligible employees could leave the company with financial support and career-planning resources. 

“This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources,” she said.

The voluntary exit offer follows Microsoft’s voluntary retirement programme earlier this year, which was open to around 8,750 US employees. About 30% of eligible employees accepted, Microsoft said.

The company also announced plans to cut around 4,800 jobs in July, with reductions affecting its Xbox gaming business and other parts of the company.

The latest programme comes as Microsoft increases spending on AI infrastructure, including data centres and computing capacity. The company is investing heavily in AI services and products, including its Copilot offerings, while managing the costs associated with expanding its infrastructure.

Coleman said the VEO builds on lessons from the earlier retirement programme and is part of Microsoft’s approach to managing workforce changes. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. We’ll learn from it,” she said.

She added that Microsoft would continue helping employees build skills and explore internal opportunities where appropriate, saying there was “no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee”.

It has also committed $20.5 billion in investment in India between 2025 and 2029 across cloud and AI infrastructure, skilling and operations.