Microsoft Lays Off 6,000 Employees as It Accelerates Investment in AI
Microsoft is cutting 6,000 jobs globally to streamline its operations and strengthen its investment in artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. The layoffs, equivalent to 3% of its global workforce, are part of an organizational restructuring focused on simplifying the internal hierarchy. The decision comes despite the company reporting solid quarterly revenue of $70.1 billion.
The goal is to redirect resources toward strategic areas such as artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. The cuts affect workers at all levels, across all teams, and across all geographies, with a particular impact in Washington state. The 6,000 job cuts announced by Microsoft are the company’s largest labor restructuring since 2023, impacting engineering, product management, and operations employees across the board.
One of the central focuses of this restructuring is the reduction of intermediate management levels, with the objective of increasing each leader’s “span of control.” This means each manager will supervise more people, simplifying decision-making and reducing hierarchical redundancies. Divisions such as Cloud + AI and Security are setting concrete goals: eight engineers per manager in the first case and up to nine subordinates per manager in the second.
The layoffs are not due to immediate financial difficulties. Microsoft reported revenue of $70.1 billion in its latest quarter, a solid figure that confirms its operational health. However, the company faces increasing pressure to balance its books in the face of unprecedented expansion in artificial intelligence infrastructure. For fiscal year 2025, Microsoft plans to invest more than $80 billion in AI-enabled data centers, the largest amount in its history.
Restructuring to lead the next decade, Microsoft is betting on smaller, technical, and faster teams, capable of making decentralized decisions and executing projects quickly. The priority is not stability but scale. By freeing up human and financial resources from less strategic areas, Microsoft can reorient its workforce toward generative artificial intelligence, cloud security, and global services.
