Kamal Ghorui
Microsoft has told managers across its cloud unit and North American sales teams to stop hiring anyone who doesn’t already have a job offer in hand, The Information reported, citing three employees with direct knowledge. The move comes as the company scrambles to rein in costs and shore up margins before its fiscal year closes in June—a period during which it’s also burning through billions on AI infrastructure.
The AI teams get a pass, everyone else, not so much
The freeze isn’t company-wide. Teams building Microsoft’s Copilot AI tools are still actively hiring, which tells you where the company’s priorities lie. But for divisions outside that AI orbit, the belt-tightening is real. This follows a sweeping overhaul of Microsoft’s HR organisation reported by Business Insider earlier this week, with Chief People Officer Amy Coleman restructuring her team to prioritise speed and adaptability. Chief Diversity Officer Lindsay-Rae McIntyre is also departing the company on March 31.
$80 billion in AI spending, and Wall Street wants receipts
Microsoft pledged $80 billion in capital expenditure for fiscal year 2025—most of it directed at AI infrastructure. But that spending hasn’t come cheap on the balance sheet. The company reported slower cloud growth in the October–December quarter alongside record capital expenditure, a pairing that rattled investors. Earlier this year, Microsoft shed roughly $440 billion in market cap as doubts around AI profitability mounted.The company had about 228,000 employees globally as of June 2025. Its last major layoff round came in July, when it cut roughly 9,000 roles—about 4% of its workforce. The Xbox division bore the brunt, with Microsoft cancelling games like Perfect Dark and Everwild, and shutting down The Initiative studio. Two months before that, around 6,000 employees were let go in a round framed around operational efficiency.
This isn’t Microsoft’s first cost-cutting move this year
Even before the current freeze, Microsoft had been pulling back. In January 2025, it froze hiring across its US consulting division, slashed marketing budgets by 35%, and pushed employees to swap travel for remote meetings. The consulting arm’s $1.9 billion in revenue made it a relatively painless target next to the company’s cloud and productivity juggernauts.The pattern is hard to miss. Microsoft is funnelling billions into AI while trimming headcount and discretionary spending almost everywhere else. How long that trade-off holds depends entirely on when those AI bets start generating returns.
