Microsoft plans to cut thousands of sales jobs

According to media reports, Microsoft is planning to cut thousands of jobs to streamline its workforce. The focus is on sales in particular, amid increasing investment in artificial intelligence.

This was reported by the news agency Reuters. Microsoft already made numerous employees redundant in May. Around 6,000 employees were affected by the job cuts, but “at all levels, in all teams and in all regions”. In June 2024, Microsoft had 228,000 employees worldwide.

Microsoft is currently massively increasing its investments in artificial intelligence, particularly in AI data centers. Reuters reports that Microsoft is planning to invest a total of USD 80 billion this fiscal year, most of which will go towards expanding data centers to iron out capacity bottlenecks for AI services. Earlier this month, the Group announced investments of USD 400 million for AI and cloud data centers in Switzerland.

Announcement expected from Microsoft

Nevertheless, Microsoft is expected to announce the planned redundancies early next month, after the end of Microsoft's fiscal year, as Reuters writes with reference to Bloomberg. However, the job losses are not exclusively limited to sales and the timetable could still change. Microsoft has so far refused to comment on these reports to Reuters.

Other large companies are also expecting job cuts in the future. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, for example, believes that the online retailer will manage with fewer employees in office jobs. Artificial intelligence should be able to replace them.

Of around 1.5 million employees at Amazon, 350,000 do their job in the office, according to previous information. However, Amazon does not expect any major waves of redundancies, but assumes that positions that become vacant will not be filled.

(dmk)