Microsoft has opened a voluntary exit programme to employees in four countries, in a cost-cutting move tied to the scale of its spending on artificial intelligence. Reporting on the scheme puts the number of eligible staff at about 60,000 — roughly a quarter of the company’s global workforce.

The company published the announcement on its own website on Monday. Hiru News reported it at 12.17 a.m. Colombo time on Tuesday, attributing the figure and the list of affected divisions to a source close to the company speaking to Reuters.

What Microsoft actually announced

The programme is called the Voluntary Exit Offer. It was set out in a note to staff from Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, published in edited form on the company’s corporate blog.

Microsoft says the offer is open to eligible employees on participating teams in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, at level 70 and below — the company’s internal grade, which outlets have described as vice-president level and downwards. It is time-limited, and those who take it leave with financial support and career planning resources.

Coleman’s note stresses that take-up is uneven across the business: “Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not. Participation varies based on each business’s priorities, customer commitments and workforce needs.” She describes the scheme as building on what the company learned from a Voluntary Retirement Program run earlier this year.

The figure is not Microsoft’s

This is worth stating plainly, because the number is what has travelled: Microsoft’s announcement contains no headcount at all. It names no divisions, gives no deadline, and does not say what share of staff is eligible. The 60,000 figure, the quarter-of-the-workforce framing, the division lists and the December timetable all come from news organisations, not from the company’s published statement.

Hiru lists the participating divisions as AI Experiences, Copilot, Finance, Human Resources, Xbox and Windows + Devices, and says marketing, commercial business and security are excluded. International reporting reviewed for this article — which this desk does not cite as a source — broadly matches on the included divisions, but gives the excluded groups as data centre staff, sales and marketing rather than security. Those reports also say employees must decide in early December and would leave at the end of the year, and that Microsoft confirmed the roughly 60,000 figure when asked.

Context

Microsoft has been running heavy capital spending on data centres to meet AI demand, and this is its second voluntary departure scheme of the year. The company cut thousands of jobs alongside Meta in April as AI spending climbed; that earlier round was the retirement programme Coleman’s note refers back to.

What is not established

Microsoft has not published the value of the package, the number of eligible employees, the deadline, or what happens to teams where few people accept. No filing reviewed says whether compulsory redundancies follow if take-up is low, though reporting indicates the company has not ruled them out. The breakdown by country is not published, so the effect on Microsoft’s large India workforce is not quantified. The discrepancy over whether security staff or data centre staff are excluded is unresolved, and Hiru is the only verified newsroom in this desk’s source list to have filed on it.