Microsoft shares were trading lower Thursday afternoon, leaving the stock deeper in bear-market territory and down about 24% on the year. Seasonal data suggests it is the worst start to a year for Microsoft on record.
A new report from The Information says Microsoft executives have instructed managers across major divisions, including Azure cloud and North American sales, to freeze hiring as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and boost margins ahead of the June fiscal year-end.
Microsoft employees who spoke with the outlet said the hiring freeze is not companywide. They said Copilot and some other AI-related engineering divisions are still hiring, but managers in large cloud and sales organizations were told to halt all new hirings in recent weeks.
"The company reported slightly decelerating Azure growth in the fourth quarter of last year and said roughly 45% of its Azure revenue backlog, or customer spending commitments, come from one customer, OpenAI," The Information noted.
Microsoft reduced headcount by 15,000 last year. The company ended 2025 with 228,000 full-time employees, the same amount as a year earlier, according to Bloomberg data. Hiring momentum has certainly leveled off after hiring sprees that began in 2016 and accelerated in the early days of Covid.
Another employee who spoke with senior Microsoft executives said headcount will not increase in the coming years, both due to pressures on the software business and the proliferation of AI tools.
The pattern of behavior across big tech companies pouring tens of billions of dollars into AI infrastructure has been to trim labor costs. Meta, Google, AWS, Atlassian, and ServiceNow have all been cutting, freezing, or reshuffling headcount as AI spending rises.
Layoff tracker Layoffs.fyi shows 71 tech companies have axed nearly 40,500 jobs so far this year. Layoffs are nowhere near the levels seen during the tech job-cut apocalypse between 2Q22 and 2Q23.
"Azure Core no longer has room or approval to continue hiring," Azure Core chief of staff Hilary Macfadden told the outlet. "Until we have credible, executable plans locked to address that [gross margin] gap, pressure will continue to cascade," she said.