More jobs to go at Microsoft next month, report
Sales positions will be hit in July, according to insiders
Microsoft is planning another round of redundancies, with a significant number of sales jobs to go, media reports say.
According to Bloomberg, which cited unnamed sources, the job cuts will be announced early July after the end of the company’s current financial year.
Along with other big tech companies, Microsoft has undertaken several rounds of redundancies in recent years, in part to restructure as it focuses on AI.
In May, Microsoft revealed that it was laying off approximately 6,000 employees, representing about 3% of its global workforce, despite strong finances. Unlike previous rounds of cuts, the layoffs were not performance-related, the company said at the time. Instead, they were intended to reduce layers of management enabling it to capitalise on emerging growth areas such as generative AI.
Previous rounds of cuts included a massive cull of 10,000 positions in 2023 followed by 1,900 jobs chopped from Activision Blizzard and Xbox.
Microsoft has not commented on the latest report.
It comes as Amazon CEO Andy Jassy warned staff that many of their jobs were on the line because of AI, and that the technology would lead to a smaller workforce over time.
“As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs,” Jassy wrote.
Microsoft was early to respond to the shock caused by the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, pumping $10 billion into its maker OpenAI, with another $3 billion to follow. However, recent reports have suggested that Redmond may be cooling in its support for Sam Altman’s company.
Redmond is prepared to walk away from its alliance with OpenAI, according to the FT, which cited unnamed sources. Sticking points in negotiations include the size of Microsoft’s eventual stake, and OpenAI’s plans to convert fully to a for-profit company, the report says.
The company has also been diversifying away from OpenAI’s models as rivals catch up, supporting models from xAI, Meta, DeepSeek and Mistral on its Azure AI foundry.
Earlier this month IBM announced 8,000 job cuts, many in HR, following increased automation within the company.