Microsoft laid off around 4,800 employees, or 2.1% of its global workforce, on Monday, with the cuts concentrated in its sales and Xbox gaming organizations. Xbox accounts for 1,600 of the cuts and plans to reduce its workforce by 20% this fiscal year, part of a broader effort to trim costs as Microsoft pours money into AI infrastructure amid investor worries that AI could upend traditional software. HR chief Amy Coleman told employees the eliminated roles are not being replaced by AI, though the company said AI is changing how work gets done, and the cuts land below the roughly 15,000 roles Microsoft eliminated a year earlier, part of a wave of Big Tech layoffs that included around 8,000 at Meta in May.
