Days after laying off thousands of employees, Microsoft says AI helped save over $500 million

Microsoft is reportedly saving millions of dollars by deploying AI.  During a recent presentation, Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff claimed the company saved over $500 million in its call centres last year, thanks to AI tools that improved productivity across sales, support, and software engineering, Bloomberg reported.

But the timing of Althoff’s remarks has stirred discomfort. Just a week earlier, Microsoft laid off over 9,000 employees in its third major round of cuts this year, pushing total layoffs in 2024 to around 15,000. For workers impacted by the downsizing, hearing Microsoft boast about cost savings and workflow optimisation — powered by the very technology replacing human roles — feels, at best, tone deaf.

The tone was further muddied by a now-deleted LinkedIn post from Xbox Game Studios producer Matt Turnbull. He suggested AI tools like ChatGPT and Copilot could help employees “manage the cognitive load” of losing their jobs—a comment that, unsurprisingly, didn’t land well.

Whether AI is directly replacing jobs or the layoffs are part of broader post-pandemic restructuring remains unclear. But the contrast is hard to ignore: Microsoft reported $26 billion in profit and $70 billion in revenue in the most recent quarter, while also surpassing Apple in market cap and trailing only Nvidia. That success, the company says, will fund even more AI development—an eye-watering $80 billion investment in AI infrastructure is planned for 2025.