Microsoft Offers Voluntary Buyouts to 60,000 Staff Amid AI Buildout

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to up to 60,000 employees—roughly 27% of its 223,000 full-time global workforce as of June—across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and India as industry-wide artificial intelligence data center spending surges past $700 billion this year, according to reports by The Verge and the Associated Press via ABC7 News.

In a Monday memo to employees, Microsoft Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote that the “Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us” and provides eligible staff “the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources.” Unlike an earlier May retirement program limited to roughly 8,750 to 9,000 U.S. employees whose age plus years of service totaled at least 70—and following 4,800 job cuts in July—the new offer is not based on age, tenure, or performance.

Sources told The Verge that employees in AI experiences, Copilot, CoreAI, Windows + Devices, Xbox, finance, and HR are eligible, while Cloud + AI, MicrosoftAI, and legal teams are partially participating and marketing, commercial business, discovery and quantum, and security teams are excluded.

Google Research Launches ‘Polar Peaks’ Connectomics AI Quest

Meanwhile, Google Research Senior Director Ronit Levavi Morad announced the launch of “Polar Peaks,” the third interactive lesson created with the Stanford Accelerator for Learning in the Webby Award-winning AI Quests series for students ages 11 to 14.

Following more than 400,000 completed quests across 10 languages in earlier flood-forecasting and diabetic-retinopathy modules, “Polar Peaks” draws on Google’s decade of connectomics research—including the complete neural mapping of the fruit fly brain—to teach students data cleaning, model testing, and human oversight, accompanied by new educator training modules.

Fanatics Lifts Engagement 10% With OpenAI-Powered ‘Shop the Look’

In enterprise e-commerce, digital sports platform Fanatics announced that it used OpenAI’s Codex and ChatGPT Work to build and test an AI-powered Shop the Look outfit recommendation engine in under 24 hours for its first 50 products. Now live on Fanatics.com and official NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL online stores, the system achieved 10% higher engagement across roughly 30,000 MLB products.