The company's voluntary exit offer was available to eligible employees in Canada, India, the United Kingdom and the United States, the company's Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in a blog post Monday.
“The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us,” Coleman wrote. “We’ll learn from it. At the same time, we’ll keep helping people focus on the work that matters most, build new skills and, where it makes sense, find new opportunities across Microsoft.”
The company, which releases its quarterly financial results Wednesday, had approximately 223,000 full-time employees at the end of June.
Shares of Microsoft Corp., based in Redmond, Washington, hit an all-time high this month. The stock rose about 1% on Monday.
The gusher of investment in data centers — likely topping $700 billion this year — to power artificial intelligence has made memory chips, computer processors and other equipment, as well as electricity, more expensive. Economists expect it will continue to push up inflation at least through the end of this year.
