Microsoft opens voluntary exits to up to 60,000 staff, including Xbox

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India, a scale that reaches deep into a company of about 223,000 people.¹

The program is voluntary. In a message to staff, chief people officer Amy Coleman described it as giving employees “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources” while the company trims headcount without another forced layoff round.¹

Here is the interesting part for anyone who follows the silicon and software stack that actually ships to players and PC buyers: eligibility is not limited to back-office roles. Sources familiar with the situation told The Verge that staffers across Microsoft can receive the offers, including people on AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance, and human resources teams.¹

Partial participation applies to cloud + AI, MicrosoftAI, and corporate, external, and legal affairs, those sources said. Marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security teams are not in the program.¹

That mix matters on a hardware beat. Windows + Devices is where OS and device work meet the metal people actually buy. Xbox is the console and services arm whose chips, kits, and live platforms show up in living rooms. AI experiences, Copilot, and CoreAI sit on the same corporate map as the models and interfaces increasingly welded into those products. When voluntary exits open across those groups at once, the org chart around GPUs, handhelds, consoles, and PC software can shift without a single public product announcement.

Think of a large tech workforce as a city’s rail network: thousands of specialized lines (teams) feeding a few major hubs (Windows, Xbox, cloud and AI). A voluntary exit offer is not ripping up track; it is opening gated side platforms so some riders can leave with support, which changes how crowded the remaining trains get. (Yes, the footnote-worthy detail is which lines are open and which stay closed, and The Verge’s sourcing draws that map.)

The timing sits only months after Microsoft laid off 4,800 employees, a cut that primarily hit Xbox and commercial sales.¹ Xbox CEO Asha Sharma is also planning new rounds of layoffs, per a Fortune report cited in the same coverage.¹ Today’s voluntary offer does not target commercial sales teams.¹

It is also a different machine from the voluntary retirement program Microsoft ran earlier this year. That earlier pass reached only around 9,000 employees and applied to U.S. staff at a certain level whose age plus years of service totaled 70 or more.¹ The new Voluntary Exit Offer, laid out in an internal HRweb note seen by The Verge, is not based on age, length of service, or performance.¹

Coleman told employees the approach itself is fresh territory. “The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” she wrote, adding that the company will learn from it while helping people focus on priority work, build skills, and, where it fits, move into other roles inside Microsoft.¹ She also stressed there is no single template for every team or every employee, framing the buyouts as one of several ways the company is trying to match different business needs while still creating internal paths to grow and contribute.¹

Microsoft’s internal note further said the company may consider another voluntary exit offer later if business and workforce needs call for it.¹ In other words, this is a standing tool the firm is willing to pick up again, not a one-day experiment sealed in amber, though how many people actually accept across those four countries will only show up in later headcount math.

For a paper that lives on GPUs, consoles, and the unglamorous engineering under the marketing slides, the inclusion list is the story under the story. Xbox eligibility lands after a year already marked by Xbox-related cuts and by outside reporting that more Xbox reductions are planned. Windows + Devices eligibility puts the PC and device org in the same voluntary pool. AI experiences, Copilot, and CoreAI eligibility, and partial participation from cloud + AI and MicrosoftAI, puts the company’s most heavily advertised growth bets in the conversation too, even as other groups such as security and commercial business sit out.¹

None of that tells you which individual product teams shrink, which roadmaps slip, or how many acceptances land in Redmond versus India. What is known is the ceiling (up to 60,000), the geography (US, UK, Canada, India), the company-wide baseline (about 223,000 employees), the in-and-out team list from people familiar with the situation, and the contrast with both the 4,800-person layoff and the narrower ~9,000-person retirement offer.¹ Honest reading stops at those numbers and attributions.

What to watch next is mechanical and boring in the best way: how many people take the package in the eligible orgs, whether a second voluntary window appears as the HRweb note allows, and whether Fortune’s reporting on further Xbox cuts turns into confirmed actions that stack on top of voluntary departures. Buyers and players do not feel an org chart; they feel patch cadence, hardware support windows, and whether Windows and Xbox teams still have the bandwidth to ship the unsexy reliability work.

On the bench: if you care about Xbox hardware, Windows devices, or the AI features landing in both, this is a large voluntary headcount valve opening across exactly those neighborhoods of the company, not a product cancelation notice. Track acceptances and any follow-on cuts before you read roadmap tea leaves; the chips and SKUs on store shelves change only after the org does.

Footnotes

1. theverge.com, “Microsoft offers voluntary exits to about 60,000 employees”. Retrieved October 27, 2026. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴