• 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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• Once experimental tech, AI turrets are now becoming an "integral part of air defense" in Ukraine's war.
• These are guns that can detect and lock onto targets by calculating speed and trajectory.
• Ukraine has deployed over a dozen of these and is looking to surge their production and use.

Ukraine is using machine gun turrets controlled by artificial intelligence in battle, and they're working well enough that Kyiv wants to roll them out at a faster pace.

While Ukraine began revealing prototypes of these systems last year, Brave1, the country's defense innovation platform, said on Thursday that they've now become "an integral part of air defense" for its forces.

"In the last month alone, automated turrets have destroyed dozens of enemy drones over Kyiv," Brave1 said, adding that it started work on these weapons in 2024 as experimental technology.

Not much is publicly known about the core capabilities of these turrets, such as their range or how their software works, but they've primarily been described as an air defense tool against Russian drones.

The idea is that artificial intelligence helps the turret detect, acquire, and track a target, making it more accurate than human operators at engaging high-speed air targets such as jet-powered Gerans.

More than a dozen such systems are now deployed in the Kyiv area, with another eight planned for the region, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in early October.

In a sign that Ukraine plans to lean further into the technology, Zelenskyy later praised the systems further, saying on October 19 that AI-powered turrets have "proven highly effective against shaheds."

"We are increasing orders, and it is important to accelerate every process as much as possible — organizational, financial, and production-related," Zelenskyy said.

One such system, the Sky Sentinel, is a .50-cal M2 Browning turret developed and operated by private air defense firm Carmine Sky. It can spin 360 degrees and lock onto a target while firing by calculating speed and trajectory.

Each one costs about $150,000, a Ukrainian commander told Business Insider's Jake Epstein last summer, and can distinguish between birds and drones. The turret still requires a human operator to authorize when to fire, the commander said.

Brave1 released a montage on Thursday indicating that Ukraine is also fielding other types of automated turrets, showcasing clips of several designs.

It said turrets had shot down at least 60 targets under its Private Air Defense Project, a pilot that allows private Ukrainian firms to buy air defense equipment and train civilian staff to use them against drones threatening factories, warehouses, and other important sites.

Notably, Brave1 said these turrets took down Russian Geran-5s and Banderols — jet-powered drones and cruise missiles that can reach speeds of 375 to 400 mph.

A similar claim was made by Yuriy Ihnat, the Ukrainian air force's spokesperson, in early October, when he said that AI-powered turrets had shot down Russian jet-powered drones for the first time. Ihnat did not say which system was used.

Kyiv has eagerly integrated AI into much of its war effort, using machine learning models for other functions, such as predicting enemy drone strikes and autonomously conducting supply runs with robotic buggies.

The turrets do have limited range, making them more useful as a final defense against drones or against low-flying targets.

They'll likely be one of several tools Ukraine is developing to counter Russian jet-powered threats.

Over the last few months, the Kremlin has been ramping up production and deployment of cheap cruise missiles or drones equipped with turbojet engines. These weapons, flying at nearly half the speed of sound and launched by the thousands every month, have become a major challenge for Ukrainian air defenses.