New Delhi: American multinational corporation and IT giant Microsoft Corporation will cut more than 1000 jobs as the conglomerate is rearranging its staff to support its ambitious Artificial Intelligence initiatives. This will be Microsoft’s third significant layoff wave of 2025. Most of the jobs that will be eliminated in early July will be from the sales department. Microsoft’s new fiscal year This particular time of early July coincides with the beginning of the companys new fiscal year according to Bloomberg and the Times of India. As mentioned above Microsoft is reshuffling its staff to support its ambitious Artificial Intelligence initiatives for which it is doubling down on efficiency and strategic realignment as AI investments mount up. Sales Division in third round of layoffs This third round of layoffs is considerably more focused on customer-facing positions than the earlier two rounds which were mainly focused on engineers and developers. The most affected would be the employees in Sales and Marketing department which accounts for about 45000 of Microsofts 228000 workers. In the first two rounds of layoffs Microsoft fired around 2300 employees in Washington this year. Earlier in 2023 the company had fired 3200 people which was the biggest layoffs round. Reportedly Microsoft had dropped a hint about this move in June 2024 as it relieved 1000 mixed-reality and Azure roles. Apart from that the company started selling software to outside companies in April as it concentrated on small and mid-sized business sectors. Experts say that apart from the sales positions other departments might also be impacted. In May the company had laid off more than 6000 people in a 3% cut of its workforce. Out of which 1985 employees affected were from Washington. Investments in realm of Artificial Intelligence In the proverbial ‘keeping up with the times’ and adapting to current trends Microsoft is now emphasising more on AI as it tries to stay ahead in a fast-changing technology landscape. The tech giant is investing heavily into data centres and AI research to support growing demand from businesses that are adopting AI tools and services. The Bloomberg report further said that Microsoft has planned capital expenditure of around Rs 6.6 lakh crore ($80 billion) for the ongoing financial year. A big chunk of this expenditure will go into expanding data centre infrastructure as the aim is to reduce pressure on existing facilities that support AI services. Layoffs in the tech sector are continuously troubling IT professionals. Recently Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has warned that the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the corporate workforce will eventually lead to job cuts. After the COVID-19 pandemic big tech companies like Amazon Meta and Google laid off thousands of workers to reduce their staff. Now another tech giant Microsoft has given a live sombre and somewhat gloomy presentation.