Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed his employees after announcing the company’s latest round of layoffs, which impacted 9,000 employees. This round of layoffs brought the overall workforce reduction to over 15,000 this year.
“Before anything else, I want to speak to what’s been weighing heavily on me, and what I know many of you are thinking about: the recent job eliminations. These decisions are among the most difficult we have to make. They affect people we’ve worked alongside, learned from, and shared countless moments with—our colleagues, teammates, and friends. I want to express my sincere gratitude to those who have left. Their contributions have shaped who we are as a company, helping build the foundation we stand on today. And for that, I am deeply grateful,” Nadella said via email.
READ: US layoffs hit highest level since 2020 with Microsoft cutting 9,000 employees (
Nadella also added that Microsoft was “thriving”, and that the cuts were purely to bring operational efficiency, and the “overall headcount” remained relatively unchanged. “I also want to acknowledge the uncertainty and seeming incongruence of the times we’re in. By every objective measure, Microsoft is thriving—our market performance, strategic positioning, and growth all point up and to the right. We’re investing more in CapEx than ever before. Our overall headcount is relatively unchanged, and some of the talent and expertise in our industry and at Microsoft is being recognized and rewarded at levels never seen before. And yet, at the same time, we’ve undergone layoffs,” he said in the email.
Nadella also stated that the company is doubling down on the fundamentals to define new frontiers in AI, and urged his employees to stay focused on security, quality, and AI transformation. “We will reimagine every layer of the tech stack for AI—infrastructure, to the app platform, to apps and agents. The key is to get the platform primitives right for these new workloads and for the next order of magnitude of scale. Our differentiation will come from how we bring these layers together to deliver end-to-end experiences and products, with the core ethos of a platform company that fosters ecosystem opportunity broadly. Getting both the product and platform right for the AI wave is our North Star!” he said.
READ: Microsoft pushes back at H-1B visa criticism amid layoffs (July 30, 2025)
Microsoft laid off over 6,000 employees in May, followed by at least 300 more in June. And back in January, it trimmed less than 1% of its workforce, reportedly due to performance-based evaluations. Previously, Microsoft had let go of 10,000 employees in 2023. Its biggest round of layoffs occurred in 2014 when the company cut 18,000 jobs following its acquisition of Nokia’s devices and services division.
Microsoft recently responded to criticism related to its recent wave of layoffs and the hiring of employees on H-1B visas. The company has firmly rejected the idea that visa hiring is behind the job cuts, instead emphasizing that its hiring decisions are based on business needs.