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Microsoft offers a quarter of its global workforce voluntary buyouts as AI spending accelerates · Best of: Features

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  Microsoft offered a quarter of its global workforce, voluntary buyouts as AI
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  spending accelerates. This article is
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  being read by an automated voice generated by Everlet. Microsoft has offered
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  sixty thousand employees, or about twenty seven percent of its global workforce,
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  voluntary buyouts as the software giant spends heavily on artificial intelligence. The
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  Company's voluntary exit offer was available to eligible employees in Canada, India,
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  the United Kingdom, and the United States. The company's Chief People Officer,
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  Amy Coleman, wrote in a blog post Monday. The voluntary exit offer
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  is new for us, Coleman wrote. We'll learn from it. At the
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  same time we'll keep helping people focus on the work that matters
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  most, build new skills, and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities
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  across Microsoft The company, which releases its quarterly financial results Wednesday, had
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  approximately two hundred twenty three thousand full time employees at the end
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  of June. Shares of Microsoft Corp. Based In Redmond, Washington, hit an
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  all-time high this month. The stock rose about 1 on Monday. In
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  May, Microsoft planned to offer buyouts to about eight thousand seven hundred
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  and fifty people, or seven percent of its US workforce, according to
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  two people familiar with the plan who were not authorized to speak
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  about it publicly. In July, the company said it was cutting four
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  thousand eight hundred jobs, about two point one percent of its global
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  workforce, including a large number of workers at its Xbox video game
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  business. The gusher of investment in data centers, likely topping seven hundred
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  billion dollars this year, to power artificial intelligence has made memory chips,
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  computer processors and other equipment, as well as electricity, more expensive. Economists
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  expect it will continue to push up inflation at least, through the
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  end of this year. Microsoft has been ramping up its AI capabilities
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  for several years. In twenty twenty four the company revealed a new
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  class of AI imbued personal computers that centered on fusing its AI
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  assistant, called Copilot, into the Windows operating system for PCs, where Microsoft
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  already has the eyes of millions of consumers. And in october twenty
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  twenty five Microsoft introduced a new artificial intelligence character called Miko, a
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  floating cartoon face shaped like a blob or flame that embodies the
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  software giant's co pilot virtual assistant.