Microsoft plans another round of layoffs in July 2025 — Which teams could be hit after 6,000+ job cuts already this year?
Microsoft's layoff for next month: Microsoft layoffs in 2025 are escalating again as the tech giant prepares for another round of job cuts, targeting its Xbox division and sales teams in early July 2025.
Following May's culling of over 6,000 roles across engineering and product areas and subsequent cuts in customer-facing units, this marks Microsoft's third major downsizing this year.
Driven by a strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence and massive investment in data centers, this workforce shake-up underscores the tension between innovation and human cost.
As layoffs hit across divisions, employees and analysts are watching closely—will this reshape Microsoft's structure and culture? Stay tuned as we unpack the latest developments and what they mean for the tech landscape.
Microsoft to fire more employees
According to those familiar with the plans, Microsoft will carry out a larger company-wide restructure next week, including another round of significant layoffs in its Xbox gaming sector.
This is the fourth major layoff at Xbox in 18 months, and managers anticipate huge cuts throughout the gaming department. Xbox will be responsible for any impending layoffs, affecting thousands of workers in sales divisions.
According to Bloomberg, Microsoft has a history of making organizational changes during this time, and the layoffs coincide with the company's fiscal year ending on June 30.
Pressure on Microsoft's gaming division's profits
This could be the fourth major layoff at the company in the past 18 months | Credit: Pixaby
Microsoft executives have been putting increasing pressure on Xbox to increase its profit margins before the $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard concluded in 2023. Several staff reductions have occurred in the gaming division, including 1,900 layoffs in January 2024, 650 reductions in September, and the closing of other game studios, including Redfall producer Arkane Austin and Hi-Fi Rush developer Tango Gameworks.
According to sources, Microsoft is reorganizing Xbox distribution in central Europe, with certain regional offices completely shutting down. According to The Verge, these adjustments are meant to streamline operations and align the company with next-generation platform development.
This year's third significant layoff at Microsoft will also impact the company's sales and marketing division
After 6,000 layoffs in May and more than 300 more weeks later, the Xbox layoffs mark Microsoft's third significant employment decrease in 2025.
The corporation has previously stated that it will lay off about 3% of its 228,000 employees to reduce expenses and flatter management.
With some 45,000 employees, Microsoft's sales and marketing division will be most affected by the impending layoffs. The reorganization reflects the tech giant's ambition to balance operational efficiency across other business areas and significant AI investments, which are expected to total $80 billion for data center spending this fiscal year.
Regarding the anticipated layoffs, Microsoft chose not to comment.
For the latest and more interesting tech news, keep reading Indiatimes Tech.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
an hour ago
- Time of India
After Nvidia and Google AI CEOs, top OpenAI executive says Anthropic CEO's AI job warning is 'wrong'
From left: Brad Lightcap, OpenAI chief operating officer; Sam Altman, OpenAI chief executive; and the hosts of the "Hard Fork" podcast, Casey Newton and Kevin Roose, during a live recording of "Hard Fork" at the SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco, June 24, 2025. Altman discussed President Trump's understanding of artificial intelligence, the war for AI talent and OpenAI's relationship with Microsoft. (Mike Kai Chen/The New York Times) ChatGPT-maker OpenAI 's COO, Brad Lightcap, has expressed skepticism regarding predictions made by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei that artificial intelligence (AI) will kill entry-level white-collar positions. Taking a more measured stance, Lightcap directly addressed Amodei's recent projection that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. 'We've seen no evidence of this. Dario is a scientist, and I would hope that he takes an evidence-based approach to these types of things,' Lightcap stated during The New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast. Lightcap asserted that OpenAI, which collaborates with a vast array of businesses, hasn't observed any impending doom for these employees. 'We work with every business under the sun. We look at the problem and opportunity of deploying AI into every company on earth, and we have yet to see any evidence that people are kind of wholesale replacing entry-level jobs,' he explained. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Buy One, Get One Free, Up To 50% Discount, Expiring Soon Original Adidas Shop Now Undo Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed Lightcap's sentiments, joining him for the panel interview. Altman suggested that historical precedent indicates innovations like AI typically lead to new job creation. The great AI job debate Amodei's forecast, shared last month, was reportedly intended to galvanise governments and competitors into preparing for future changes. He expressed concern that 'Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen... It sounds crazy, and people just don't believe it.' This contrast in outlook highlights a significant debate among tech leaders. While some executives, including those at Shopify and Duolingo, are encouraging managers to prove that AI cannot fill new roles, figures like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman also hold differing views. Huang is more optimistic that AI will reshape jobs rather than simply eliminate them, and Hoffman, while not predicting a 'bloodbath,' believes AI's full impact is still underestimated. Hassabis said AI will disrupt traditional roles and that the technology will also create valuable and new jobs, asking students and professionals to embrace AI tools. Skullcandy Dime Evo: 5 Features That Make It Stand Out! AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Microsoft launches Mu AI model for smart local tasks on Windows PCs
Microsoft has rolled out a small AI model called Mu that runs locally on Copilot+ PCs. It is designed to give users fast and accurate help by using the device's Neural Processing Unit instead of relying on cloud servers. Mu already supports the Windows Settings app for users in the Windows Insider Dev Channel. You can type natural language queries like "turn on night light," and Mu understands and responds in real time. The model has 330 million parameters and uses a Transformer encoder-decoder setup. This allows it to process input and output separately, which leads to better speed and lower delay. Microsoft claims that Mu generates more than 100 tokens per second and has much lower latency than other models of its size. Mu was trained using Azure A100 GPUs and tuned with advanced methods such as grouped-query attention and rotary positional embeddings. These help the model work efficiently even on limited hardware. To ensure Mu runs well on different PCs, Microsoft partnered with Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. With post-training quantisation, the model was adapted to work with lower-precision formats like 8-bit and 16-bit integers. On devices like the Surface Laptop 7, Mu achieves output speeds over 200 tokens per second. Initially, Microsoft tested a larger model called Phi LoRA, which was accurate but slow. Mu, after fine-tuning, proved to be faster while still meeting the accuracy requirements. The team scaled up Mu's dataset to include 3.6 million training samples and added support for hundreds of Windows system settings. Features like prompt tuning and noise injection improved the model's ability to understand real-world queries. Mu is part of Microsoft's broader push to bring AI features directly to the device. It builds on earlier research from models like Phi and Phi Silica and will likely play a key role in future AI experiences on Windows PCs.
Economic Times
2 hours ago
- Economic Times
Hawkish Fed could inflict markets' biggest 'pain trades': McGeever
As the first half of the year closes, financial markets are in limbo, waiting to see how the kaleidoscope of global trade deals will - or won't - come together after July 9, when Washington's pause on its "reciprocal tariffs" expires. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads As the first half of the year closes, financial markets are in limbo, waiting to see how the kaleidoscope of global trade deals will - or won't - come together after July 9, when Washington's pause on its "reciprocal tariffs" expires. But if investors are wrong-footed, which trades will be the most vulnerable?The state of suspended animation in today's markets is remarkably bullish. U.S. growth forecasts are rising, S&P 500 earnings growth estimates for next year are running at a punchy 14%, corporate deal-making is picking up, and world stocks are at record uncertainty immediately following President Donald Trump's April 2 "Liberation Day" tariffs seems a distant memory. The relief rally has ripped for nearly three months, only taking a brief pause during the 12-day war between Israel and a pretty rosy outlook, some might say too rosy. If we do see a pullback, what will be the biggest "pain trades"?The major pressure points are, unsurprisingly, in asset classes and markets where positioning and sentiment are most overloaded in one direction. As always with crowded trades, a sudden price reversal can push too many investors to the exit door at once, meaning not all will get out in identify the most overloaded positions, it's useful to look at the Bank of America's monthly global fund manager survey. In the June survey, the top three most-crowded trades right now are long gold (according to 41% of those polled), long "Magnificent Seven" tech stocks (23%), and short U.S. dollar (20%).This popularity, of course, means these three trades have been highly "Mag 7" basket of Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet and Tesla shares accounted for well over half of the S&P 500's 58% two-year return in 2023 and 2024. The Roundhill equal-weighted "Mag 7" ETF is up 40% this year, and the Nasdaq 100 index, in which these seven stocks' make up more than half of the market cap, this week hit a record the gold price has virtually doubled in the last two-and-a-half years, smashing its way to a record high $3,500 an ounce in April. And the dollar is down 10% this year, on track for its worst first half of any year since the era of free-floating exchange rates was established more than 50 years some ways, these three trades are an offshoot of one fundamental bet: the deep-rooted view that the Federal Reserve will cut U.S. interest rates quite substantially in the next 18 months, a scenario that would make all these positions though the Fed's revised economic projections last week were notable for their hawkish tilt, rates futures markets have been upping their bets on lower rates, largely due to dovish comments from several Fed officials and a sharp fall in oil prices. Traders are now predicting 125 basis points of rate cuts by the end of next at Morgan Stanley are even more dovish, forecasting no change this year but 175 basis points of cuts next year. That would take the Fed funds range down to 2.5%-2.75%.Lower borrowing costs would be especially positive for shares in companies that can expect high future growth rates, like Big Tech. Low rates are also, in theory, good for gold, a non-interest-bearing on the flip side, it's difficult to construct a scenario in which the economy is chugging along, supporting equity performance, while the Fed is also slashing rates by 175 on that scale and at that speed would almost certainly signal that the Fed was trying to put out a raging economic fire, most likely a severe slowdown or recession. While risk assets may not necessarily collapse in that environment, over-extended positions would be this isn't the first time investors have banked on Fed cuts in the past three years, and we have yet to see a major blow-up as a result. Markets have handled "higher-for-longer" rates much better than many observers warned, soaring to new highs in the if "pain trades" do emerge in the second half of the year, it will likely be because of one sore spot: a hawkish Fed.(The opinions expressed here are those of the author, a columnist for Reuters.)Enjoying this column? Check out Reuters Open Interest (ROI), your essential new source for global financial commentary. ROI delivers thought-provoking, data-driven analysis. Markets are moving faster than ever. ROI can help you keep up. Follow ROI on LinkedIn and X.
