If you spend any time on social media, whether that be Bluesky or X, you may have seen some reports going around that Microsoft is preparing to cut tens of thousands of jobs amidst the rising costs of artificial intelligence. Whether true or not, Microsoft’s lead communications officer has come forward to refute the claims.
A report on the site TipRanks said that Microsoft is “considering massive layoffs” this month, with the plan to cut anywhere between 11,000 and 22,000 jobs on the Azure Cloud, Xbox, and global sales teams. After circulating on Bluesky and X for a while, Windows Central editor Jez Corden purported that the news was “false” on Xbox’s side of things. Not long after this, Microsoft CCO Frank X. Shaw–who’s been at the company for nearly 17 years, according to his LinkedIn–chimed in to dismiss the report as well.
100 percent made up / speculative / wrong.
— Frank X. Shaw (@fxshaw) January 7, 2026
There’s a lot of skepticism under both Corden and Shaw’s posts. However, Shaw has responded to a lot of the commentary, saying that he, too, “eagerly awaits” the news that he claims is wrong.
None of this is to say that layoffs at Microsoft may not happen in some future. The company has gone through a myriad of job cuts recently. This just underscores that you can’t believe everything you read online, as some–if not most–of it is engagement bait.
That said, Microsoft has cut jobs at the company recently. In early July 2025, Microsoft laid off roughly 9,000 employees, with Xbox head Phil Spencer calling the cuts “necessary” for the company’s enduring success. As a result of these cuts, several games were canceled and studios were closed so that the company could “increase agility and effectiveness,” Spencer said at the time. Despite those layoffs, though, Microsoft still reached a valuation of $4 trillion in late July 2025.
