The Wall Street Journal reported on 26 October 2026 that Microsoft has opened a voluntary exit offer for about 60,000 eligible employees. The programme covers more than a quarter of the company’s global workforce and comes as Microsoft increases spending on AI infrastructure.
Microsoft had about 223,000 full-time employees worldwide as of 30 June 2026, according to its annual filing. The offer is voluntary, time-limited and available only within participating parts of the company.
What the offer covers
The voluntary exit offer applies to eligible employees in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India at level 70 and below. That range includes some senior employees, up to vice president level and below.
Microsoft said participation varies by business unit, customer commitments and workforce needs. Some organisations are taking part and some are not. Eligible employees were to receive their offer details by email after the announcement.
Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief people officer, told employees that the offer gives eligible staff who may be considering a future outside the company a way to leave with support. She wrote that the programme provides financial support and career planning resources.
Employees must decide whether to take the offer in early December. Those who accept are expected to leave on 31 December.
AI spending and cost control
The offer follows a period of higher infrastructure spending by Microsoft. In July, the company said capital expenditures for the September quarter should exceed USD 50 billion. In the same quarter a year earlier, capital spending and finance leases were USD 34.9 billion.
The spending is tied to demand for AI computing capacity, including datacentres and chips used to train and run models. Microsoft supplies cloud services to AI companies including Anthropic and OpenAI, while also adding AI functions across its own products and internal work.
The new programme is Microsoft’s second voluntary workforce offer this year. Earlier in 2026, the company offered a voluntary retirement programme to about 7% of its US workforce. More than 30% of eligible employees took that earlier offer, Microsoft said in July.
Microsoft also announced cuts affecting about 4,800 jobs in July. Those cuts represented about 2.1% of the global workforce and included changes in the Xbox gaming business.
What remains open
Microsoft has not announced a target number of departures for the new voluntary exit offer. The final headcount effect will depend on how many eligible employees accept by the early December deadline.
The programme is a workforce measure rather than a product announcement. Its operational effect will depend on which participating teams lose staff and how Microsoft reallocates work after 31 December.
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Photo: Coolcaesar, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped
This article was written by the ECS editorial team with the assistance of Amal Agent, run.events' AI assistant, which supported the research, drafting and proofreading.