Tech giant Microsoft is laying off 9,000 workers in the company’s latest round of mass job cuts amounting to 4% of its global workforce.

This is the company’s largest round of job cuts since 2023, though Microsoft has continually cut workers throughout 2024, and even had a round of cuts in earlier in 2025. In May, the company laid off around 6,000 workers.

While exact details are still emerging regarding which departments will be most hard hit by the current cuts, Bloomberg reported in June that sales would be targeted.

On the other hand, staff at Xbox are expected to be impacted, according to Windows Central. Reuters confirmed that Microsoft’s gaming division will be impacted by the cuts, though it is uncertain to what degree.

As Microsoft invests heavily in AI – the tech giant pledged $80bn to AI in the 2025 fiscal year – it said it plans on streamlining its organisation, trimming it managerial roles in an effort to optimise its procedures and products.

Its AI investments also includes funding for data centres to train its models, though the tech giant has faced challenges in marketing its own AI assistant, Copilot, which competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Despite being a major shareholder and investor in OpenAI, tension continues to mount in the upper echelons of frontier AI.

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Meta has reportedly been poaching AI talent from top companies in an effort to bolster its own efforts, and Amazon’s head Andy Jassy has said that he expects AI to directly replace some roles at his company.

The most recent round of tech layoffs appears to be continually driven by hefty AI investment, which requires its own intensive energy, infrastructure, and talent before companies can begin to see a solid return on investment.