Microsoft saves $500 million with AI, but with 15,000 job cuts

Microsoft’s chief commercial officer, Judson Althoff, revealed during a presentation this week that artificial intelligence (AI) is improving productivity across departments, from sales and customer service to software engineering, according to a Bloomberg report.

Althoff said that AI helped Microsoft save over $500 million in its call centres alone last year and led to higher employee and customer satisfaction, as per the report.

He also said that Microsoft has begun using AI to manage interactions with its smaller clients.


These internal comments come just a week after Microsoft laid off over 9,000 employees, its third major round of job cuts this year. This took the total to around 15,000.

While it’s not clear whether those jobs were directly taken over by AI, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella did previously mention that AI writes between 20% to 30% of the code in the company’s repositories.

Something similar is happening at Marc Benioff’s Salesforce as well. Recently, the company acknowledged that adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) tools has enabled it to scale back on recruitment.

During a recent analyst call, CFO and COO Robin Washington confirmed a slowdown in hiring, with 500 customer service roles being reassigned internally, an adjustment expected to save $50 million.

Additionally, Benioff admitted that the company is using AI to do 30% to 50% of its work.