Microsoft Opens a Second Buyout Window to 60,000 Staff While Billions Flow Into AI

Roughly 60,000 Microsoft employees — about 27 percent of the company's 223,000-strong global workforce — are being offered a voluntary exit package, the software giant's second such round this year. Word of the programme surfaced in media reports on 26 October 2026.

The stated aim is to reshape the cost base while the company channels enormous sums into artificial intelligence infrastructure. Eligibility is drawn along geographic lines: staff in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom can apply. German sites and the rest of Europe are excluded, according to the reports. Employees up to vice-president level in selected divisions qualify.

Where the door is open — and where it is shut

Among the units covered are Windows, Xbox, Copilot, hardware, and the human resources and finance departments. Carved out entirely are areas the company treats as critical: cloud and AI data centres, sales, marketing, IT security, quantum computing and the commercial business. Microsoft declined to comment on these internal boundaries.

The financial terms keep granted stock options intact. A departing employee receives 60 days of base salary plus one week's pay for every six months of service. For more senior roles the weekly calculation doubles, capped at 39 weeks. Chief people officer Amy Coleman briefed eligible staff in an internal memo, and the company is pledging support for their next career steps.

Applications close in early December, with 31 December set as the departure date. Management expects take-up well below the 30 percent seen in an earlier programme.

The spending behind the offers

AI outlays are the backdrop. In July, Microsoft said capital expenditure for the September quarter would top 50 billion US dollars, against 34.9 billion US dollars a year earlier. Free cash flow in the second quarter fell 23 percent year on year to 19.64 billion US dollars. At the end of June the group employed 223,000 people, some 5,000 fewer than at the close of the previous year.

This is not the first lever pulled. In April the company launched an early-retirement scheme for about seven percent of its US workforce — nearly 9,000 people whose age and years of service added up to at least 70. More than 30 percent of those eligible signed up. July brought layoffs of around 4,800, or about 2.1 percent of the global workforce, after 15,000 jobs had already been cut the year before.

A German contrast: BMW's scheme fills faster than expected

Voluntary buyouts are drawing attention well beyond software. BMW had to pause its own programme for roughly 40,000 employees in Germany after demand outstripped expectations. The carmaker wants to shed around 8,000 positions by the end of 2027, concentrated in indirect functions such as administration, accounting, and research and development, with production left untouched.

BMW's packages scale with income and length of service and in individual cases reach up to 650,000 euros, plus discounts on car purchases. Its internal calculation portal was briefly overwhelmed, prompting the company to close the offer for the time being. Alongside severance, BMW is relying on phased retirement and natural attrition; compulsory redundancies are ruled out.