• Microsoft offered a buyout to 60,000 employees this week.
• The offer spooked the tech industry and stoked chatter and concern inside the company.
• The key question: How many employees Microsoft is prepared to lose?

Microsoft's huge employee buyout stunned the industry this week, raising urgent questions about why the software giant might want so many people to leave.

Inside the company, concerned staff debated the meaning of the move. Why might Microsoft want to shed 60,000 workers? Will roles be replaced by AI? Are more layoffs ahead?

Business Insider spent recent days speaking with Microsoft insiders to find out what's really happening. The people asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters.

The main takeaway so far is that Microsoft seems to have unnecessarily spooked employees with the sheer size of its buyout offer, leaving leaders scrambling to calm the troops.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood in an internal memo explained the offer was intended to "offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms" and said the company expected "very few people" to accept.

Microsoft doubled down later and told Business Insider it anticipates 3,000 or fewer employees will take the buyout. That's only about 5%, or less, of those eligible.

Layoff concerns

Earlier this year, the company offered a retirement buyout to employees based on age and tenure. About one-third accepted.

Soon after, Microsoft did another round of layoffs. Some employees who didn't accept the retirement offer ended up losing their jobs.

That's led to speculation that more layoffs may come in the wake of this week's bigger buyout offer.

"Future workforce needs will continue to be based on business needs and priorities," Microsoft said in a statement.

Misconceptions and differences

Business Insider spoke to Microsoft executives who said there are misconceptions about the current buyout offer.

These executives could only speak about their own teams, and they were hesitant to definitively say layoffs aren't coming. However, they pointed out a few differences between the current buyouts and the retirement offer.

"Microsoft doesn't want to shrink by 60,000 people," one executive said, while asking not to be identified. "We are not replacing everyone with AI."

This person thinks Microsoft made latest buyout offer because some employees complained that they weren't eligible for the retirement buyout earlier this year.

And in the case of the retirement buyout, when employees left, Microsoft didn't fill those roles — the headcount went away.

This week's buyout works differently. In some cases, when staff leave this time their roles will be backfilled with new hires.

Why the latest buyout looks so big

One reason the latest buyout looks so huge: Some leaders decided it would be simpler to offer it to their entire organization, rather than try to pick which specific teams or individuals should be included.

"It's easier to opt-in giant organizations," one Microsoft executive told Business Insider.

Charles Lamanna, the executive in charge of the Copilot Platform, AI agents, Office and Word, decided to offer it to everyone in his organization, one of the people said. That includes many people in critical positions. The organization is prepared to backfill roles if any of those critical employees accept the buyout, this person said.

The Cloud + AI group took a different approach

Microsoft's key Cloud + AI division took a slightly different approach, according to another executive from the company.

Two teams — Azure Hardware Systems and Infrastructure and Cloud Operations + Innovation teams — decided not to offer the latest buyout to staff.

Most other groups within the Cloud + AI division did offer the buyout to employees. And this division can backfill some roles, this executive told Business Insider.

Cutting costs and avoiding layoffs

Backfilling roles could still help Microsoft cut labor costs. One executive at the company said if a senior person were to leave, they would likely backfill the role with someone more junior who would potentially be paid less. A Microsoft spokesperson said that's not an official company position.

If all this seems overly complex, compared to layoffs, there may be a reason: Microsoft has been under fire for cutting American staff while employing foreign workers.

The Trump administration recently suspended Microsoft from a federal program that sponsors foreign workers for permanent residency, accusing the company of laying off American employees while hiring lower-paid foreign workers. Microsoft has denied those claims.

"Never say never, but there's a lot of desire not to do big layoffs, especially as an American company," one of the Microsoft executives told Business Insider.

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• The founder behind the "never-ending" cruise told Business Insider that problems piled up this year.
• The Iran war sent fuel prices soaring. Then Villa Vie spooked passengers by asking them for loans.
• Now founder Mikael Petterson says he is considering bankruptcy.

A financial whirlpool sucked the "never-ending" cruise under.

The founder behind the Villa Vie Odyssey told Business Insider that the Iran war fuel-price surge was the beginning of a "cascading effect" that led the cruise to shut down this week. Mikael Petterson, Villa Vie Residences' founder and executive chairman, said he's considering bankruptcy.

Villa Vie sold permanent cabins at prices ranging from $119,999 to $439,999, promising residents an endless cruise with stops at more than 400 ports of call and a global circumnavigation every three-and-a-half years.

Here are five business problems that brought the trip to an abrupt end.

1. Fuel prices soared.

In February, the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran. Fuel prices surged. The Odyssey uses marine gas oil, or MGO.

Villa Vie had typically paid around $600 or $700 per metric ton for the Odyssey's fuel, Petterson said. By March, the price of MGO in Singapore had soared to nearly $2,000 per metric ton, according to data from Ship & Bunker, a trade publication.

2. The company was too small to hedge.

Some publicly traded companies, like Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, have told shareholders this year that they have taken measures to blunt the impact of fuel-price volatility. Unlike larger cruise lines, Villa Vie didn't have the scale to absorb the higher prices, Petterson said.

"They're able to hedge and take away some of that risk, but we're too small of a company to do that," he said.

The ship changed its itinerary to spend more time docked at ports and conserve fuel, but it wasn't enough, Petterson said.

3. Villa Vie spooked its own passengers.

In April, Villa Vie wanted residents to help shore up its finances. The company asked them to loan Villa Vie money, offering them interest rates of 12% to 24%, according to a letter viewed by Business Insider.

Some residents got "scared," Petterson said. They sold their cabins to other people who wanted to live aboard. That made things more difficult for Villa Vie's sales team, which was still trying to find buyers for the remaining vacancies on the ship, Petterson said.

4. The company's reputation was damaged.

Some of the Odyssey's residents were content creators. In Substack posts and YouTube videos, they posted about their experiences, some positive and some negative, for the roughly two years that it sailed the world.

Some travel bloggers and social media posters blamed Villa Vie's management for the operation's financial troubles. The negative publicity made it harder to bring more people aboard, Petterson said.

5. The company struggled with cash flow.

The ship's original launch in 2024 was delayed for four months while mechanical problems — including issues with the aging ship's rudder — kept the ship stuck in dry dock. Preparing the ship for launch cost $15 million more than what Villa Vie had expected, Petterson said.

He said the operation was on track to get to break-even cash flow by the second quarter of this year — but the Iran war blew up that plan.

• A "never-ending" cruise was halted because of soaring fuel prices. Its founder blames the Iran war.
• Mikael Petterson says he's considering bankruptcy for his company, Villa Vie. "I feel awful."
• He says residents began to jump ship when the company asked them for emergency loans.

The founder of the "never-ending" cruise that stalled in Cambodia told Business Insider he's doing his best to right the ship.

"I feel awful," Mikael Petterson said when reached by phone Wednesday. The vessel's evicted residents are "counting on me to make the decisions here, and there's nothing else I'm focused on."

After a stormy two years at sea, he had a plan last week to keep the ship's finances afloat, he said.

With his company, Villa Vie Residences, Petterson had promised a new way of life: People could spend six figures to purchase one of 509 cabins on a luxury cruise ship called the Odyssey, and sail around the world for the rest of their lives.

Reality was different. Unexpected mechanical problems delayed the ship's launch for months. Some passengers were unhappy with their cabins. Then the war in Iran sent fuel prices soaring. Residents began to jump ship.

That began a financial whirlpool that sucked the ship under. The price surge was the beginning of a "cascading effect" that led Villa Vie to shut the Odyssey down on Tuesday, Petterson said. The company told passengers living aboard to leave the ship within hours.

"Nobody that's tried residential cruising has succeeded, and we've gone further than anyone else," said Petterson, Villa Vie's founder and executive chairman. "But I think we would have been absolutely fine — and we would have seen this through — if there was no Iran war."

Until last week, Petterson said, he was in talks with a potential investor and was expecting a new infusion of cash. When the deal fell apart, he said, the company was out of options. Now he's considering bankruptcy. He said he understood why residents said they felt shocked and heartbroken.

"I'm the villain in the story, but I'm doing everything I can to support the residents on a solution," he said.

A turbulent launch

The Villa Vie Odyssey was supposed to set sail from Belfast in May 2024. But it wasn't yet seaworthy.

Villa Vie Residences had retrofitted the three-decade-old ship and sold permanent cabins at prices ranging from $119,999 to $439,999. The company's pitch to residents was an endless cruise with stops at more than 400 ports of call and a global circumnavigation every three-and-a-half years. Buyers uprooted their landbound lives with plans to live out the rest of their days on a luxury floating hotel with a pool deck and spa.

Mechanical problems — including issues with the aging ship's rudder — kept the ship in dry dock, leaving some passengers stuck in Belfast for months. Preparing the ship for launch cost $15 million more than what Villa Vie had expected, Petterson told Business Insider.

Once onboard, some passengers were unhappy with their accommodations. Two passengers sued last year, claiming that the ship's living quarters and amenities weren't as promised. One of them also lamented the noise from a pickleball court installed over his cabin. Villa Vie has disputed the claims and said it honored the terms of its contracts. Both lawsuits are ongoing.

Petterson said the ship's first year-and-a-half at sea was "a ginormous undertaking" beset by financial challenges, but the company had put in place a plan for the operation's cash flow to break even by the second quarter of 2026.

Then, in late February, the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran.

Jumping ship

Fuel prices surged. The Odyssey uses marine gas oil, or MGO.

Villa Vie had typically paid around $600 or $700 per metric ton for the Odyssey's fuel, Petterson said. By March, the price of MGO in Singapore had soared to nearly $2,000 per metric ton, according to data from Ship & Bunker, a trade publication.

Unlike larger cruise lines, Villa Vie didn't have the scale to absorb the higher prices, Petterson said.

"They're able to hedge and take away some of that risk, but we're too small of a company to do that," he said.

In April, Villa Vie wanted residents to help shore up its finances. The company asked residents to loan Villa Vie money, offering them interest rates of 12% to 24%, according to a letter viewed by Business Insider. Villa Vie also changed the ship's itinerary, canceling stops at some ports to stretch its fuel supply, Petterson said.

Some residents got "scared," Petterson said. They sold their cabins to other people who wanted to live aboard. That, in turn, made things more difficult for Villa Vie's sales team, which was still trying to find buyers for the remaining vacancies on the ship, he said.

The Odyssey's passengers were mostly Americans; some of them were content creators. In Substack posts and YouTube videos, they posted about their experiences, some positive and some negative, for the roughly two years that it sailed the world.

Some travel bloggers and social media posters blamed Villa Vie's management for the operation's financial troubles. The negative publicity made it harder to bring more people aboard, Petterson said.

By the start of June, fuel prices were falling and things were looking up for Villa Vie, Petterson said. The Odyssey had sold 85% of its units, he said. Villa Vie announced plans to launch another residential cruise ship that would be bigger and better than the Odyssey.

Then in July, fighting between the US and Iran expanded. Fuel prices jumped, and the company's prospects plunged again, he said.

As fuel prices remained high, Villa Vie entered into talks with Oneil Khosa, the former CEO of Margaritaville's cruise line, to inject cash and join as an operational partner, Petterson said. Last week, the negotiations turned into "a game of chicken that just blew up in everyone's face," he said. Talks fell apart.

Khosa didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Villa Vie announced that the Odyssey was suspending operations while it was docked this week at the port of Sihanoukville in Cambodia. The price of MGO in Cambodia is now $2,200 per ton, Petterson said, and in Manila, it is even higher.

Passengers told Business Insider they were given only eight hours to disembark.

Barbara Fiegel, 62, who had lived with her partner aboard the Odyssey since December 2024, returned to the ship with her partner later that evening and the following day to pack their belongings.

"I couldn't stop crying," she said.

Petterson said the company could undergo a court-supervised restructuring that would allow management to remain in control, or it could have to liquidate.

"We just don't have the financial ability to sustain normal operations for the time being," he said. "So we're protecting the asset and laying it up until we can find a solution going forward."

Petterson expressed pride in the "community of almost 400 residents" that sailed around six continents. He said letting them down felt "incredibly deflating."

"I'm working day and night to find a way to get through this," he said.

Joshua Nelken Zitser contributed reporting.

Have you spent time on the Villa Vie Odyssey as a cabin owner, renter, or staff member? If you have a story to share, get in touch with us at jzitser@businessinsider.com.

• Charles Lamanna, head of Copilot, Agents, and Platform, just took over Office and Teams.
• Teams within his new combined unit have adopted flatter structures amid the rise of AI agents.
• He's also enforced a stricter RTO for senior staff, and offered employees relocation to major hubs.

Microsoft's head of the Copilot platform, AI agents, and now Office is making good on his promise to reshape how his teams work.

"The most important thing my team will do this year won't be any single product or feature we ship: instead, it will be changing how we work," Charles Lamanna, the new boss of this key Microsoft unit, wrote in August.

Lamanna has started requiring senior staff to work in offices four days a week, and he's offering relocation to major hubs, according to people familiar with the changes. Teams within his organization have also reorganized to a flatter structure removing middle managers in line with Lamanna's views about how agentic AI is changing engineering.

"We're rethinking where managerial layers are critical and where flatter structures can enable faster decision-making, clearer ownership and greater autonomy," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

The moves offer an early look at how Microsoft is reworking its software empire for the AI age. Lamanna, who already oversees the company's Copilot and AI agent platforms, now controls the Office productivity software and Teams workplace chat service that are used by millions of workers.

Lamanna took over those groups earlier in October when the previous boss, Ryan Roslansky, announced plans to leave at the end of the year. Roslansky was seen as a successor to Microsoft veteran Rajesh Jha, who retired in July. Roslansky and Lamanna were two of the three executives who made up the new Copilot leadership team.

The changes come as CEO Satya Nadella reshapes the company around AI. Microsoft has been consolidating responsibility for its AI products, and a wave of senior executive departures has made way for a new generation of leaders.

"Span of control"

Lamanna's expanding responsibilities make him a key player in this leadership transition, giving him oversight of Microsoft's flagship workplace software and the AI tools that could change how customers use its products.

Recently, the Teams unit now under Lamanna reorganized by increasing the "span of control" for managers in engineering, according to two of the people familiar with the changes.

This refers to the number of employees who report to each manager, and it's become common for tech companies to flatten engineering organizations like this in the AI era, as coding tools and agents write more software.

The reorganization included converting managers to individual contributors, the people said. The idea is that agentic coding capabilities mean Microsoft needs fewer managers, according to one of the people. The team will now have a ratio of one manager per 12 individual contributors.

"Agentic coding capabilities have changed every level of the engineering function," Microsoft's spokesperson said. "Software engineers are no longer hand-assembling every line of code. Instead, they are now designing and directing the 'agentic coding machine' that helps build the product."

As AI makes it easier to build software, skills like making sound technical decisions, designing systems, ensuring quality and security, and understanding customer needs become more valuable.

"At the same time, some tasks that traditionally required managerial coordination, such as managing handoffs and orchestrating work across teams, become less central," the spokesperson said.

Other teams have implemented similar restructuring, the spokesperson confirmed.

RTO and relocation

Lamanna has also started reshaping where employees work. Last week, Lamanna's Copilot, Agents, and Platform (CAP) organization offered select US employees the option to relocate to offices at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington headquarters, San Francisco, or New York, according to three people familiar with the plans.

The people who spoke with Business Insider for this story asked not to be identified discussing internal matters.

Lamanna has also asked employees at the "partner" level and above — some of Microsoft's most senior staff — to start working in physical offices at least four days a week. The companywide standard is three days a week.

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• Microsoft lowered its 2026 capex forecast to $170 billion, down from $175 billion.
• CFO Amy Hood cited delays in third-party capacity as Wall Street scrutinizes returns on AI spending.
• Azure revenue jumped 48%, beating expectations, while Microsoft's headcount fell 2%.

Microsoft reduced its forecast for capital expenditure, a rare move in an industry that mostly continues to splurge more on huge AI investments.

The software giant said capex for the 2026 calendar year will be $170 billion from a previous forecast of $175 billion.

Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood gave the forecast on the company's fiscal first-quarter earnings call on Wednesday.

She said Microsoft was expecting new capacity to arrive from third-parties, but some of these "GPU-as-a-Service contracts" have been delayed until the second half of the fiscal year.

This likely refers to other providers of AI cloud services that use Nvidia GPUs to run their offerings. Microsoft has partnered with some outside providers to meet rampant AI demand.

Hood's comments could refer to a recent spate of AI data center project delays, which have mostly been caused by a lack of electricity, along with local opposition.

The CFO said Microsoft expects capex to accelerate in the second half of its fiscal year, as the delayed capacity kicks in.

Wall Street has become increasingly concerned the huge investments cloud companies are making to expand AI infrastructure. Microsoft last quarter kept its forecast unchanged, notable as many cloud giants have been steadily increasing their AI spending forecasts.

Overall, Microsoft reported $92.3 billion in revenue, up 19%, for the fiscal first-quarter ending Sept. 30. Azure cloud revenue was up 48% to more than $33 billion, surpassing Wall Street expectations.

Microsoft share were up about about 3% in after-hours trading following the earnings call.

Earlier this week, Microsoft offered a buyout to more than a quarter of its workforce. A Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider on Wednesday that the company expects 5% of eligible employees at most to accept the buyout.

"We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft," Hood wrote in an internal memo viewed by Business Insider. Microsoft's headcount slipped 2% during the fiscal first quarter, the company reported.

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• Microsoft is offering buyouts to about a quarter of its workforce.
• In an internal memo, Microsoft's finance boss said the company expects "very few people" to accept.
• Employees had been questioning the rationale behind the offer, the memo said.

Microsoft expects 3,000 or fewer employees to accept the buyout it offered this week to more than a quarter of its workforce, a spokesperson told Business Insider.

The point was reiterated on Wednesday by Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, who wrote in an internal memo that employees have been questioning the rationale behind the buyout.

"I know there have been some questions on the rationale behind the voluntary exit offer that we announced this week," Hood wrote. "Our intent is to offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms. We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft."

The memo statement was part of a quarterly earnings email Hood typically sends internally to employees every quarter when Microsoft discloses its financials.

These memos mostly repeat what the company reports publicly, but this time Hood went out of her way to address the buyout offer, which caused quite a stir across the tech industry this week.

Earlier this year, Microsoft offered a different retirement buyout. In that situation, about one-third of eligible employees took the offer, and that helped Microsoft cut fewer employees in subsequent layoffs.

This week's buyout is getting a lot less uptake, according to the company.

Read the CFO's full memo

Team,

This afternoon, we announced our first-quarter financial results. We exceeded Wall Street expectations, growing revenue 19% and operating income 21%.

With the start of FY27, we also made an important change to how we report our business. We announced that we changed our reporting structure for the first time in 12 years, moving from three segments to two: Agents and Infra, and Devices and Consumer. This change better reflects how we are running the business today — from how we build products and allocate resources to how we create value for customers across the connected layers of our platform. To give you a sense of the two segments, looking back to last fiscal year, Agents and Infra would have represented about 81% of our revenue while Devices and Consumer would have been 19%.

A few highlights from the quarter across our two new segments:

• Agents and Infra grew revenue 23% this quarter
• Microsoft Cloud revenue was $63.9 billion and accelerated to 30%.
  Azure revenue increased 48% reflecting accelerating Foundry demand.
• Microsoft 365 commercial cloud revenue increased 18% in constant currency driven by growth in our premium seat offerings like Copilot and E7 as well as usage-based services across M365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot.
• Microsoft 365 commercial seats increased 5% and the number of customers with more than 50,000 M365 Copilot seats increased 8x year-over-year.
• Microsoft 365 consumer cloud revenue increased 17% with subscriber growth of 7%.
• Industry solutions cloud revenue increased 10% with growth in Dynamics 365 and LinkedIn Talent Solutions.
• Devices and Consumer declined 3% this quarter
• Search and advertising revenue ex-TAC increased 12%, with growth across LinkedIn, Bing, and Edge.
• Windows OEM and devices revenue decreased 22%, reflecting the prior-year benefit from Windows 10 end of support, inventory drawdowns by OEM partners, and weaker PC market demand.
  XBOX content and services revenue decreased 2%. Last week, we launched Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4, as we continue to bring great games to more players across more devices.

Thank you for everything you did to deliver a strong start to the year. In particular, I want to thank our engineering and capacity delivery teams who are working to help us deliver more capacity faster and with high reliability. These teams are also using the capacity we have more efficiently to create room for us to better meet customer demand for the Azure platform, which continues to exceed our supply.

I know there have been some questions on the rationale behind the voluntary exit offer that we announced this week. Our intent is to offer employees agency if they choose to leave the company on their own terms. We expect very few people to select this offer because of the growth opportunities here at Microsoft. We'll continue to provide a broad set of options for employees to learn, gain new skills, and advance their careers here.

We have tremendous opportunity ahead of us. To meet the moment, we are focused on delivering great products and solutions that help our customers to achieve their many goals — security, innovation, growth — to name a few. Thank you for keeping positive, value-creating outcomes for our customers at the top of the list.

To hear more details about the quarter and our outlook for Q2, you can join live today at 2:30PM Pacific Time, listen on-demand, or read the transcript on the Investor Relations website. Finally, mark your calendars for Microsoft Ignite, on November 17-20, where we'll show how our innovation across AI, cloud, data, security, and Copilot is coming together to help customers transform their businesses.

With appreciation and gratitude,

Amy

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• Google's AI chip business is turning into a TPU-shaped headache for Nvidia.
• A blockbuster deal with Oracle will put Google's TPUs inside another hyperscaler.
• Is the market underestimating the potential of Google's chip business?

Earlier this year, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang downplayed the threat of other companies building competing AI chips, including Google.

"Without Anthropic, why would there be any TPU growth at all?" he said in an interview with podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, referring to Google's custom chips. "It's 100% Anthropic."

That is no longer the case.

On Tuesday, Google and Oracle announced a blockbuster deal that will see Google's TPUs, short for Tensor Processing Units, made available to Oracle cloud customers from next year. As the companies underscored in a joint announcement, it's the first time Google's TPUs have been offered on a hyperscaler's platform beyond its own.

Anthropic isn't the only one Nvidia should be worried about. OpenAI has a job listing for a software engineer to optimize its models for TPUs, and The Information reported Tuesday that OpenAI plans to buy TPUs from Google.

Meanwhile, several analysts have predicted Google's TPU business is about to explode as more companies hedge their bets with a multichip strategy — providing an opening for Google and others to further move onto Nvidia's turf.

Despite this, Nvidia's chip business still eclipses everyone else's, including Google, which is also a big customer of Nvidia's GPUs. Yet Google's AI chips, which the company began building more than a decade ago to power search and other products, might be poised for takeoff.

On Wednesday, during Google's third-quarter earnings call, chief financial officer Anat Ashkenazi said the company expects a "meaningful revenue ramp in 2027" in TPU sales.

Cloud chief Thomas Kurian also said on the call that TPU sales were a "meaningful contributor" to the company's Q3 financials.

In its IPO paperwork filed this week, Anthropic said it planned to spend $114.5 billion on Google compute between April 2026 and July 2033. While it didn't specify how much of that would go to TPUs specifically, it estimated spending between $125 billion and $150 billion on TPU capacity from Google and other providers.

In the same filing, Anthropic said it's also using Amazon's Trainium chips and AMD's GPUs, as well as chips from Nvidia and Google.

All told, this might be Nvidia's nightmare scenario coming true. If companies are increasingly using a multichip strategy, it could hamper Nvidia's pricing power.

Google declined to comment, and Nvidia and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment.

TPU takeoff?

Google's TPU business may only be getting started.

In notes published this month, Japanese banking group Mizuho projected TPU revenue of $28 billion for 2026 and $67 billion in 2027. Mizuho said Google could see that number reach as high as $100 billion in 2028, while TD Cowen's John Blackledge projected it could reach $138 billion, accounting for 34% of Google Cloud's 2028 revenue.

That number is still dwarfed by Nvidia, which reported $96.2 billion in revenue in the previous quarter alone, and the market reacted with a shrug on Wednesday as its share price stayed flat.

Some analysts, though, think the market is underestimating Google, especially as more companies look to reduce their reliance on Nvidia's GPUs.

"We believe Google's TPU hardware business is emerging as a materially larger opportunity than what is currently reflected in consensus estimates," Mizuho analysts wrote in a note published October 18, adding that selling TPUs outright — rather than renting them from Google's own data centers — could ease Google's aggressive capex spending.

And even if that spending continues to soar — and right now, there are no signs the foot is coming off the accelerator — analysts at Bank of America said Google's cash-splashing looks "relatively efficient" compared to its peers, as TPUs continue to power the company's own AI efforts.

For Google, it's the payoff of a decade-plus investment in silicon that was originally designed to make Search smarter. It could also act as something of a buffer against damage to its core search business as AI agents eat Google's lunch, Mizuho also said this month.

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• Microsoft is offering buyouts to about 60,000 employees.
• The offers are individualized to each employee based on their level, location, and tenure.
• Business Insider reviewed offers to show what employees get when they leave the company.

As Microsoft sends out its buyout offers to more than a quarter of its workforce, specific offers reviewed by Business Insider reveal exactly what employees get if they choose to leave the company.

The offers are individualized for each employee based on their level, location, and tenure. Those reviewed by Business Insider confirm that the US buyouts align with the company's US standard severance offers. A Microsoft spokesperson said about 60,000 employees would be eligible for the buyout.

Microsoft uses a levels system to represent seniority, from entry levels starting at 59 to senior levels at 70, or vice president. The company offered buyouts to employees on select teams in the US, Canada, India, and the UK at level 70.

Offers reviewed by Business Insider show employees at internal levels 64 and below were offered one week of base pay per six months of service, and employees at levels 65 to 67 were offered two weeks of base pay per six months of service.

Buyout offers also include continued regular stock vesting and health insurance. The standard stock-vesting severance offer is six or 12 months for levels 67 and below, based on years of service.

Eligible employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year, and there are no plans for another buyout at this time, a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Standard severance is capped at 39 weeks of base pay for levels 67 and below, while the standard severance offer for level 68 includes 12 months of salary.

Earlier this year, Microsoft rolled out a voluntary retirement program for employees. About 7% of Microsoft's US workforce, or about 8,750 people, were eligible at the time. As Business Insider previously reported, Microsoft's voluntary retirement program offer also aligned with the company's standard severance offer, including continued regular stock vesting for six or 12 months, based on years of service.

Earlier this year, another tech giant, Google, offered buyouts to staff in its business unit, Business Insider previously reported.

As more tech companies offer buyouts, some human resources professionals previously told Business Insider that this approach could soften job cuts, and also that when they're made available to workers of all tenures, companies risk losing talent.

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• The feds seized Anthropic shares last year from Sam Bankman-Fried's associates.
• Several months later, the government sold them for $627 million.
• If Anthropic IPO'd in November at $1.5 trillion, those shares would be worth nearly $4 billion.

Last year, the federal government made a windfall of $627 million when it sold Anthropic shares it had seized from associates of crypto fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.

If it had held on to that stake, its windfall could have been a lot bigger.

The federal government last year sold shares of Anthropic that had belonged to Caroline Ellison and Nishad Singh, two co-conspirators in the FTX fraud case. The proceeds went to compensate victims of the fraud, a Justice Department spokesperson told Business Insider.

Anthropic's S-1 filing on Monday revealed how much the federal government made from the sale of those shares. The prospectus doesn't name Ellison and Singh specifically. It says the government in October 2025 sold 4,453,900 Series B shares of Anthropic that "had been forfeited by former holders in legal proceedings to which we were not a party."

The figure matches up exactly with the combined $50 million in shares that Singh and Ellison purchased for $11.2261 each in Anthropic's 2022 fundraising round, and later forfeited to the government.

The shares represent about a quarter of a percent of Anthropic today. But given the company's explosive growth, they are still worth a fortune.

Anthropic hasn't yet announced the stock price for its expected November initial public offering. At a $1.5 trillion valuation, the shares would be worth a total of about $3.94 billion. That would be six times as much as the government sold the shares for a year ago.

"One of the Justice Department's top priorities is returning forfeited funds to victims through the asset forfeiture program whenever the law allows," the DOJ spokesperson said.

The feds' stake in Anthropic

How the federal government came to own a chunk of Anthropic in the first place is a story involving a notorious fraudster and a complicated criminal forfeiture process.

Bankman-Fried participated in Anthropic's 2022 Series B fundraising round with Singh and Ellison. Singh purchased $40 million of the Series B shares, and Ellison acquired $10 million.

Singh and Ellison later pleaded guilty to crimes related to their work with Bankman-Fried and testified against him at his Manhattan federal criminal trial. The jury found Bankman-Fried guilty, and a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison. The federal government took ownership of Singh's and Ellison's Anthropic shares by April 2025.

The US Marshals Service sold Singh's and Ellison's shares, rather than hold on to the red-hot Anthropic stock, Business Insider previously reported. The US Marshals Service Complex Assets Unit is typically tasked with dispensing shares of private companies acquired through criminal forfeiture.

Now we know that Anthropic purchased the stock from the feds in October 2025 at the price of $140.9676 per share, which is the same price Anthropic set for its Series F-1 stock in a fundraising round a month earlier.

Anthropic resold the shares to nine investors at the same $627 million total price it paid to purchase them from the federal government, so it didn't make a profit from the sale, according to the S-1 filing. It's not clear which nine investors purchased the shares originally owned by Singh and Ellison. Representatives for the US Marshals Service didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Anthropic shares owned by Ellison and Singh took a different path than the $500 million in Series B shares owned by Bankman-Fried himself. His shares ended up as part of FTX's bankruptcy estate, which sold them in 2024 to a few dozen buyers for a total of $1.3 billion.

The federal government sent the proceeds from the sale of Ellison's and Singh's shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, the Justice Department spokesperson said. Bankruptcy court filings show that the Justice Department transferred $638 million to the bankruptcy estate in late 2025.

The money has gone to repaying creditors, including FTX customers and investors who were scammed by the former crypto wunderkind.

Update: October 26, 2026 — This story has been updated to include a comment from the Justice Department.

Correction: October 27, 2026 — The federal government transferred the proceeds of the sale of Caroline Ellison's and Nishad Singh's Anthropic shares to the FTX bankruptcy estate, according to a DOJ spokesperson. An earlier version of this story misstated whether the funds had been transferred.

• Microsoft is offering buyouts to around 60,000 employees.
• The offers will go out later today, and resemble Microsoft's standard severance offer.
• The buyout offer could help Microsoft cut costs and reshape its workforce for the AI era.

Microsoft is offering buyouts, according to a memo Chief People Officer Amy Coleman sent to employees Monday.

"The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter," Coleman wrote.

Microsoft's voluntary exit offer is the company's latest attempt to slim its workforce without another round of involuntary cuts. After spending heavily on AI infrastructure and reducing headcount this year, Microsoft is offering remaining employees a chance to leave, testing whether voluntary departures can cut costs.

Eligible employees in the U.S., Canada, India, and the U.K. at level 70, which includes senior leaders at the company, and below, will receive an email later Monday with the terms of the offer. Only some teams are participating, excluding sales organizations, some engineering, and some corporate functions.

Around 60,000 employees — or more than a quarter of the company's workforce — about will be eligible, a spokesperson told Business Insider, and the terms will be similar to Microsoft's standard severance.

The US severance package offered when Microsoft laid off employees earlier this year included a minimum of 60 days of base pay, during which employees will remain on the payroll, and, for most employees, up to a maximum of 39 weeks of base pay, based on seniority and tenure.

Employees at internal levels 64 and below received one week of base pay per six months of service, for example, and employees at levels 65 to 67 will receive two weeks of base pay per six months of service, according to offers reviewed by Business Insider.

Eligible employees will have until early December to decide whether to take the offer and exit at the end of the year, and there are no plans for another buyout at this time, Microsoft's spokesperson said.

The buyout offer follows Microsoft's Voluntary Retirement Program, which offered a retirement buyout to about 9,000 eligible employees based on age and tenure.

About one-third of eligible employees took the buyout, in line with expectations, a person familiar with the turnout told Business Insider in June. That buyout allowed Microsoft to lay off a lower percentage of its workforce compared to last year, the person said at the time.

Read the memo:

Introducing a Voluntary Exit Offer

Today, we're introducing a new Voluntary Exit Offer (VEO) to eligible employees within participating organizations. This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support. It also gives participating orgs another way to adapt their workforce to changing needs.

The Voluntary Exit Offer reflects an important part of how we're evolving our approach to change: creating greater flexibility and, where possible, more ways for employees to shape their next chapter. This builds on what we learned earlier this year through the Voluntary Retirement Program.

What employees should know

This offer will be available to eligible employees in participating teams in Canada, India, United Kingdom and United States at level 70 and below. This is a time-limited, voluntary program that gives those who are eligible the opportunity to leave Microsoft with financial support and career planning resources. Some organizations are providing the Voluntary Exit Offer, and some are not. Participation varies based on each business's priorities, customer commitments, and workforce needs.

Eligible employees will receive an email with a link to their Voluntary Exit Offer details within the next few hours.

Looking ahead

The Voluntary Exit Offer is new for us. 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. There is no one-size-fits-all approach for every team or every employee. These are a few of the ways we're trying to meet different business needs while continuing to create opportunities for our own people to grow and contribute.

My promise is to continue to provide clarity, listen and learn, and keep improving.

Thank you for everything you continue to do for our customers, Microsoft, and for one another.

Amy

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• Nvidia's sales and marketing leadership is changing as its sales pitch evolves.
• Veterans are retiring, opening the door to internal succession and outside hires.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's daughter Madison is also gaining influence.

Nvidia's sales and marketing organizations are seeing a changing of the guard as the AI boom reshapes demands on leadership.

Veterans at Nvidia are retiring, opening the door for longtime employees. And CEO Jensen Huang is tapping talent from outside the company — and outside the chip industry — to meet new challenges.

Nvidia's sales pitch has evolved. It has already convinced companies to choose its chips. To keep growing, it has to convince more businesses to adopt AI. These customers care less about hardware specifications than how Nvidia's AI can be put to work.

Leadership changes are most visible in sales and marketing, said former vice president of corporate marketing Greg Estes, while other areas of the company, such as finance, legal, operations, and software and hardware engineering, have remained relatively stable.

In marketing, Nvidia tapped Google Cloud executive Alison Wagonfeld to become its first chief marketing officer earlier this year, while Microsoft veteran Nick Parker became its new sales chief in August. Neither comes from the chip industry, though both bring years of experience helping businesses adopt software and cloud services.

At the same time, Huang's daughter Madison has gained influence beyond her formal marketing role, two former employees said.

Huang regularly reshapes Nvidia as the business evolves, said Scott Baker, a sales VP who retired in July after 26 years.

"It's truly a battleship spinning on a dime, and everyone gets aligned," he said.

Nvidia did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

A 'deep bench' of younger Nvidia talent

Retirees this year include former sales EVP Jay Puri, VP of enterprise marketing Laura Fay, SVP of enterprise business Shanker Trivedi, and sales VP Kevin Connors.

Fay said Huang doesn't want to lose longtime executives, many of whom he personally recruited. But as they move on, the next generation is getting a chance.

Before leaving in April after 17 years, Trivedi made mentorship part of his mission. He was ready to pass the baton after years of grueling travel and seven-day workweeks.

"Time stops for nobody," the 69-year-old said.

Trivedi said Nvidia has a "deep bench" of younger sales and marketing talent who know its culture, market, and partners inside out, including Raj Mirpuri in AI cloud infrastructure, Kimberly Powell in healthcare, and Kari Briski in AI software.

When he retired, the company divided Trivedi's responsibilities among multiple leaders. As Nvidia's revenue soared during the AI boom, his job had ultimately become too big for one person.

"Better to flatten the structure and gain velocity," he said.

Another Huang is gaining influence

One insider bringing an unconventional background to Nvidia's marketing ranks is Jensen Huang's daughter, Madison Huang.

Madison formerly worked at French luxury conglomerate LVMH in hospitality marketing before joining Nvidia as an MBA intern in 2020. She has quickly ascended to senior director of product marketing for physical AI.

One former employee said Madison's experience working on luxury brands brought a fresh perspective to a marketing team traditionally staffed by semiconductor veterans.

Job titles can be fluid at Nvidia, and a second former employee said Madison's remit extends beyond physical AI marketing. They said she exerts authority across multiple parts of the company and directs teams at all levels on strategy and business decisions.

Madison is also among a small circle of executives known to travel with her father. And their close relationship gives her the ability to anticipate his needs during high-level meetings and appearances, the first former employee said.

"She 'speaks Jensen' very well," the former employee said, "so he doesn't have to explain himself to her."

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A Korean beauty treatment is taking the skin care world by storm. It's made from the skin of dead American donors.

These products, which promise to reduce signs of aging, are projected to generate $75 million in sales this year in South Korea.

Business Insider traced the supply chain to understand how donor tissue from, say, San Antonio can end up in products for sale at a clinic in Seoul — and how much money is being made along the way.