More than one in four employees are affected: Microsoft is offering voluntary departures to around 60,000 employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom

Microsoft will offer a voluntary departure plan to 60,000 employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, the group announced on Monday, six months after a first plan of the same type. This represents approximately 27% of its current workforce.

The Redmond (Washington State) firm, which employed 223,000 people at the end of June, offered a first plan in April to around 8,750 American employees.

The announcement, however, only concerns certain divisions of the group and constitutes "another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs", wrote human resources director Amy Coleman in a message to employees, without explicitly citing the turning point in artificial intelligence which weighs on the group's investments. “This offer allows eligible employees who are considering a future outside the company to make this transition now, with support,” assures Amy Coleman, director of human resources, in a memo addressed to employees and consulted by Bloomberg. The group had already offered voluntary departures to employees of retirement age in July.

Several tens of thousands of employees have already been laid off in recent years, while the total workforce has remained rather stable, according to the latest figures released in June and reported by Bloomberg. Investments in AI The announcement comes ahead of the publication of its financial results this week, as the technology sector is shaken by concerns over the profitability of the massive investments needed to develop artificial intelligence. The world's largest software company has significantly increased its investments in this technology.

Microsoft plans to invest $175 billion in AI infrastructure this year. This summer, the American giant, for example, signed an agreement worth “several billions” of dollars with the French champion of artificial intelligence (AI) Mistral in order to use the computing power of its infrastructures in Europe.

Machine-translated from French