Microsoft (MSFT) Opens Voluntary Buyouts to 60,000 Employees

60,000 Staff Offered an Exit

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, a program Chief People Officer Amy Coleman announced in a staff memo published on Monday, October 26. The time-limited offer covers staff at level 70 and below in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom, and no other regions are included. The multi-country scope sets this round apart from the buyouts Microsoft offered earlier in 2026, which reached only US staff. A voluntary buyout pays an employee to leave rather than forcing outright cuts, and the scale here is wide: the eligible pool equals more than a quarter of the 223,000 full-time employees the company reported on June 30, the end of its 2026 fiscal year. Teams in AI experiences, Copilot, Xbox and Windows + Devices qualify, while marketing, commercial business and security teams sit outside the offer. Coleman presented the program as an option for people already weighing a move. “This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating organizations another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs,” the company announcement states. The memo lists no payment amounts, and the company has not disclosed what a departing employee would receive, so the eventual cost is unknown. Staff reportedly have until early December to decide, with exits planned for the end of the year. The program is the third workforce action of 2026: Microsoft earlier offered buyouts to about 9,000 US employees and then cut 4,800 jobs in July. That history makes the current offer the largest of the three moves, and it lands days before quarterly results, a schedule that puts workforce costs squarely in focus.

Earnings Due After Wednesday's Close

Microsoft reports fiscal first-quarter 2027 results after the close on Wednesday, October 28, for the quarter covering July through September. Analyst estimates put earnings near $4.71 per share on about $90.63 billion in revenue. The print serves as the first broad check on whether the company's spending on AI is starting to pay off, and the call may also reveal whether a charge tied to the exit program lands in the December quarter. Azure, the company's cloud business, is the unit to watch, with guidance set at 44% to 45% growth. The recent record complicates the setup. MSFT shares closed 1.54% higher at $532.60 on Monday and stand up 10.3% year to date, leaving the stock near its recent range ahead of the print. Monday's gain came as investors weighed the buyout memo against the pending results. In January, Microsoft topped forecasts and its shares still fell 10% to $433.50 the next day. The drop erased $357 billion, the company's largest one-day loss in market value, and it showed that a beat alone carries no protection when spending questions dominate the call. Meta's July report offered a preview of that arithmetic. Infrastructure spending, legal charges and severance costs pushed its operating margin down to 31% from 43% in a single quarter. Microsoft faces the same forces with a far larger capital budget: the company has forecast $175 billion in expenditure for calendar 2026, and Wednesday's release will show how much of that is already flowing through the income statement.

Live COINOTAG data puts Microsoft at $531.41, up 0.94% over 24 hours, with the daily RSI at 54.9 and the trend reading sideways. Our composite scoring rates the nearest support at $529.99, scored 89/100, and the nearest resistance at $536.67 at 60/100, so the stock sits between two well-marked lines with results still ahead. Positioning in the perpetual market stays light: open interest totals $32.54 million and the funding rate reads 0.0037% per interval. With the report due after Wednesday's close, the nearest of those lines, the $529.99 support, is where a post-earnings sell-off would land first.