Microsoft lays off tens of thousands of employees Who pays the price for the AI ​​boom?

The wave of AI- related layoffs continues at major Silicon Valley companies , with Microsoft being the latest participant after offering to sell shares in the company to some 60,000 of its employees in a letter aimed at reducing expenses and restructuring its business teams in the age of artificial intelligence.

The number of employees laid off by the company pales in comparison to the latest message it sent to its employees, in which it offered to buy shares of about 7% of its total workforce in the United States , or about 60,000 employees.

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The company’s exit offer extended to employees in several prominent sectors within the company, such as Xbox, Copilot, and Windows, but excluded employees in other vital sectors such as cybersecurity , data centers , marketing, and sales.

Microsoft is not the only company to have started similar layoff waves, as major Silicon Valley companies such as Amazon , which laid off about 21,000 employees, equivalent to 21% of its total workforce, and Meta, which laid off about 8,000 employees, equivalent to 10% of its total workforce, have also participated.

Microsoft’s latest campaign comes amid a growing reliance on artificial intelligence technologies within companies across various sectors, as well as its expansion into the cloud services sector, which has become a pivotal part of the company’s profits.

This is due to Microsoft's expansion efforts to promote the services of its subsidiaries, as the company has introduced several commercial solutions for artificial intelligence services tailored to competing companies in recent months.

These solutions involved integrating artificial intelligence technologies into the Windows system and the company's Office services, as well as focusing on AI agent services and giving them more capabilities.

The company also relies heavily on artificial intelligence in the cybersecurity services it provides to its data center clients , and this may be why the departments specializing in cloud services and cybersecurity were kept out of the recent divestment campaign.