Microsoft to lay off over 6,000 employees, affecting 3% of global workforce: Report
The company has disclosed that 1,985 roles would be affected at its Redmond headquarters, including 1,510 office-based positions.
Tech giant is planning to lay off over 6,800 employees, affecting about 3% of its global workforce. As of June, the company employed 228,000 people worldwide.
The latest job cuts will span all levels, functions, and geographies, reported CNBC. The company has disclosed that 1,985 roles would be affected at its Redmond headquarters, including 1,510 office-based positions.
According to a statement by a company’s spokesperson, the report added that the layoffs are not performance-related but are part of a broader organisational restructuring.
This marks the company’s largest round of layoffs since early 2023, when it eliminated 10,000 positions.
However, the announcement also comes amid a broader trend of job reductions across the technology sector. Earlier this year, Amazon cited the need to eliminate “unnecessary layers” within its structure, while cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike recently announced a 5% reduction in its workforce.
Despite the layoffs, Microsoft reported better-than-expected financial results for the quarter, posting a net income of $25.8 billion and revenues of $70.07 billion. The company is also ramping up its AI investments, with CEO Satya Nadella stating that the firm will spend $80 billion on AI initiatives this year.
During a recent fireside chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta’s LlamaCon conference, Nadella revealed that 20% to 30% of the code in Microsoft's internal repositories is now written by AI, as the company increasingly ramps up efforts to rely on AI in its development processes.
Meanwhile, multiple media reports indicate rivals, including Google and Amazon, are also bullish on building agentic AI solutions for software development.
Amazon is reportedly working on an AI coding assistant called Kiro, designed to generate code in real time, document software automatically, and detect potential bugs. Meanwhile, Google is internally testing AI-driven products, including an agentic AI tool to assist software engineers across the entire development lifecycle.
Edited by Megha Reddy