Microsoft said Monday it is offering a voluntary exit package to a large share of its workforce, covering eligible employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom^1,3.

The Seattle Times, citing a memo from chief people officer Amy Coleman, said about 60,000 people — roughly a quarter of the company — would be eligible, at the vice president level and below, for a standard severance package based on location¹. CNBC, citing a person familiar with the matter, also put eligibility at around 60,000 and described the cutoff as experience level 70 or below³. KIRO 7 attributed the same head-count figures to the Times and said Microsoft had not yet responded to its inquiry².

Coleman wrote that the voluntary exit offer is meant to give employees more ways to leave on their own terms and that it builds on a voluntary retirement program earlier this year³. The Times said that earlier U.S. program was open to more than 8,700 workers, about one-third of whom accepted¹. CNBC said the April program was Microsoft’s first of its kind and covered about 7% of U.S. employees³.

The Times placed the buyouts in a longer head-count squeeze: about 15,000 layoffs last year, including about 3,200 in Washington, followed by smaller cuts this year that it said have mostly hit gaming¹. CNBC instead framed the offer against Microsoft’s AI data-center build-out and the strain that spending has put on the company’s finances³.

How many workers will take the offer, and whether further cuts follow, was not reported^1,3.