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Microsoft is offering buyouts to roughly a quarter of its workforce, about 60,000 people, as it looks for savings to help cover its heavy spending on artificial intelligence.

Getting into it: The offer, announced Monday, is open to employees at the vice president level and below in the US, Canada, India and the UK. The company employs about 223,000 people in total. Teams including Xbox, Windows, Copilot, finance and human resources are taking part, while some groups in sales, marketing, security and engineering are excluded.

Anyone who takes the deal gets Microsoft’s standard severance, a minimum of eight weeks’ base pay plus more for longer-serving staff. The decision window closes in early December, with departures set for Dec. 31. The company said it may still try to keep top performers who sign up.

“This offer gives eligible employees who may be considering a future outside the company a new choice to make that transition now with support,” Chief People Officer Amy Coleman wrote in a memo to staff.

Microsoft doesn’t expect many people to take the offer. The company said buyouts in tech typically draw only 3% to 5% of eligible workers, and this package is less generous than the early retirement deal it offered about 8,750 longtime US employees earlier this year, which more than 30% accepted.

The buyouts come at a time when Microsoft’s business is thriving. In the fiscal year that ended in June, revenue rose 18% to $332 billion and profit jumped 31% to $134 billion. But the company is also spending at a record pace on data centers and chips to keep up with AI demand, and in July it told investors it expected to spend more than $50 billion on capital projects in the September quarter alone.