After laying off 6,000 employees in May,Microsoftapparently has plans for thousands of additional job cuts in July. This will mark the third time that the company has decided to make significant layoffs in 2025.Microsoftis one of many tech businesses confirming similar cuts in recent months.
Theprevious Microsoft layoffs impacted multiple divisions, including the gaming division. The first round of layoffs came in January, when approximately 2,300 positions were cut. That means that Microsoft has already cut at least 8,300 positions in 2025, which makes this the company’s worst period for layoffs since the beginning 2023, when the tech giant decided to cut 10,000 jobs from its workforce.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft plans to cut thousands of jobs, with an announcement coming in July. When asked for comment about the decision, the company declined to make a statement, but in April, Microsoft announced to employees that it would soon begin using third-party firms for much of its sales department. This choice does not appear to impact the Xbox team, but heavy job losses are never a good sign for the economy as a whole. Even so, Bloomberg notes that at the same time Microsoft is laying off a lot of its workforce, the tech company is also investing heavily in artificial intelligence.
Microsoft Aiming to Cut Redundant Sales Positions
Despite Microsoft disclosing in April that it would be shifting sales to third-party companies, many people are wondering whether this decision is perhaps also tied to the growth of AI use. With mass layoffs impacting the entire tech industry at the moment, companies are being careful about the words chosen to explain these types of business decisions. Although Microsoft has not reported any intention to replace human jobs with artificial intelligence, it certainly wouldn’t be the first time such an idea was suggested.Google admitted plans to replace jobs with AIback in 2023, and the subject has since become a hot-button issue.
While companies likeEA and Take Two fear AI backlashfrom fans, this concern seems to be focused on using AI during the development of a video game. Only one of the Microsoft layoffs in 2025 is known to have resulted in job cuts to the gaming division, and that was the first layoff in January. That said, it remains to be seen whether this company will continue to cut jobs during the second half of the year, or what areas of the business will be a focus for redundancy.
