This comes after the company laid off 10,000 employees last year and reduced its global gaming staff by 8pc earlier this year amid cost cutting efforts.
Microsoft is planning to lay off hundreds of employees across its Azure cloud and mixed reality departments as job cuts at the tech giant become more frequent.
The cloud layoffs will impact the company’s Azure for operators and mission engineering teams, sources told Business Insider, with one estimate suggesting that up to 1,500 people will lose their jobs in the Azure for operators team.
This comes after Microsoft laid off 10,000 employees globally last year as CEO Satya Nadella stressed the need to “align our cost structure with our revenue and where we see customer demand”.
Nadella told employees at the time that although customers increased their digital spend during the pandemic, “we’re now seeing them optimise their digital spend to do more with less” at a time when “some parts of the world are in a recession and other parts are anticipating one”.
“At the same time, the next major wave of computing is being born with advances in AI, as we’re turning the world’s most advanced models into a new computing platform,” he said, adding that Microsoft would continue to hire across “key strategic areas”.
Yesterday (3 June), a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC that Microsoft will lay off some employees who work on its HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset as part of a “restructuring” effort on its mixed reality department. In December, the company decided to move on from its mixed reality ambitions for Windows.
However, the company plans to continue selling the HoloLens 2 device despite the latest planned layoffs.
“Earlier today we announced a restructuring of the Microsoft’s mixed reality organisation,” the spokesperson said, adding that a total of 1,000 people were being let go as part of the overall layoffs. “We will continue to sell HoloLens 2 while supporting existing HoloLens 2 customers and partners.”
In January, Microsoft laid off thousands (around 8pc of its gaming staff) at Activision Blizzard and Xbox – both owned by the software giant – to cut costs in its growing gaming business. Last month, it unveiled a new line of AI-powered PCs called Copilot+ that it claims are the “fastest, most intelligent” Windows PCs ever built.
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