Approximately 60,000 Microsoft employees are eligible to participate in the company's new buyout program, according to a person familiar with the matter. This comes just six months after the software giant introduced its first-ever voluntary retirement plan for a small subset of U.S. employees.
Microsoft announced on Monday that it would offer a separation buyout package to a large group of employees. The company introduced a new Voluntary Exit Opportunity (VEO) for eligible employees at certain job levels 70 and below in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom. A person familiar with the internal matter, who requested anonymity, said roughly 60,000 people qualify to apply.
To meet surging demand in the artificial intelligence sector, Microsoft has continued to ramp up data center investments and provide cloud services to Anthropic, OpenAI, and a range of other enterprises, putting pressure on the company's finances. In April of this year, Microsoft rolled out its first-ever voluntary retirement program, which around 7% of U.S. employees were eligible for at the time.
Amy Coleman, Microsoft's Executive Vice President and Chief People Officer, wrote in an official blog post: "The Voluntary Exit Opportunity is an important part of how we are transforming our approach to change management: it aims to create greater flexibility and give employees as many ways as possible to plan the next chapter of their lives. This program builds on what we learned from the voluntary retirement initiative earlier this year."
In the second quarter, Microsoft's cloud computing rivals Alphabet and Amazon both reported negative free cash flow, while Microsoft maintained positive free cash flow. According to the person familiar with the matter, some marketing, sales, and engineering teams have opted not to participate in the program.
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