Microsoft’s First Voluntary Buyout Could Reach Nearly 9,000 U.S. workers as AI Costs Reshape the Company

Microsoft has announced its first-ever voluntary employee buyout, which could reach approximately 7% of the company’s workforce, amounting to roughly 8,750 employees.

The buyout, first reported Thursday by CNBC, is aimed at U.S.-based employees at the senior director level and below whose ages plus years of service total at least 70. Some workers on sales incentive plans are excluded. Microsoft chief people officer Amy Coleman reportedly said the idea is to give eligible employees a chance to leave “on their own terms” with company support.

The planned buyout comes as Microsoft continues adjusting its workforce and compensation structure. The company is also reportedly revising how it distributes stock awards and simplifying its managerial review and rewards systems. The Verge reported that Microsoft is reducing the number of stock award levels from nine to five and is moving away from linking stock awards directly to bonuses, giving managers more flexibility in compensation decisions.

Microsoft said in its 2025 annual report that it employed about 228,000 full-time workers as of June 30, 2025, including 125,000 in the United States. A 7% slice of that domestic total would put the eligible pool just under 9,000 people, a meaningful number even if not all workers accept the offer.

The buyout lands as Microsoft remains one of the central winners of the AI boom, but investors have grown more impatient about the cost of cloud growth and a deal with OpenAI. In January, Microsoft posted slower cloud growth while spending a record amount on AI, which scared off investors.

Reuters reported that the company has faced concern from investors over the scale of its AI investment, its dependence on OpenAI, and the pace of adoption for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Copilot had reached a little over 3% of Microsoft’s roughly 450 million 365 customers.

That pressure has already shown up in other personnel decisions. In March, Microsoft had reportedly frozen hiring in major cloud and sales groups as it approached the end of its fiscal year and looked to rein in costs tied to AI infrastructure. The company also cut less than 3% of its workforce in May 2025, then announced another round in July 2025 affecting about 4% of jobs, as it pushed to streamline operations while continuing to pour billions into artificial intelligence.

Microsoft has not publicly framed the buyout as a layoff program. Instead, the memo describes it as a voluntary option for long-serving workers who meet the age-and-tenure threshold, distinguishing it from the more typical rounds of job cuts seen across the tech sector in recent years. Employees eligible for the buyout will reportedly receive details on how to proceed early next month.