Microsoft will lay off 6,400 employees, half of whom will be from the restructuring of its Xbox gaming division.
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Microsoft is laying off 4,800 employees, with Xbox accounting for approximately 3,200 of the job cuts.
According to Mars Finance, Microsoft announced it will cut 4,800 jobs, approximately 2.1% of its global workforce. The Xbox gaming division is the hardest hit, with 1,600 jobs laid off on July 6th and another 1,600 expected to be cut this fiscal year, totaling about 3,200 positions. Asha Sharma, who took over as Xbox CEO in February, admitted to employees that the business is currently unhealthy, stating that Xbox's profit margin is three to ten times lower than comparable platforms and publishing businesses, and rising component costs have intensified competition with Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's Switch. Microsoft will also spin off four previously acquired studios: Compulsion Games and Double Fine will operate independently, while Ninja Theory and Undead Labs will be transferred to new owners, partially reversing the gaming empire built three years ago with its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard. Chief People Officer Amy Coleman stated that the company launched a buyout program in April, and over one-third of eligible employees accepted. Microsoft's stock price has fallen by about 19% in the past six months.
Microsoft plans to lay off thousands of employees, fueling market concerns over massive AI investments and transformation pressures.
According to a report by the New York Post on July 1st, Microsoft is planning another round of layoffs, cutting thousands of jobs next week to reduce costs amid rising concerns about its out-of-control AI-related spending. Sources say the layoffs will affect less than 2.5% of the company's 220,000 employees, or fewer than 5,500 people, impacting sales and consulting departments, as well as the Xbox gaming business. Against the backdrop of rapid development in artificial intelligence, Microsoft is facing pressure from two sides: firstly, market concerns about its excessive investment in new technologies, with the company pledging approximately $190 billion in new infrastructure over the next few years; secondly, the view that AI "robots" may gradually replace traditional software tools. Meanwhile, Microsoft's stock price plummeted 19% in June, marking its worst monthly performance since the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s.
Yield Guild Games announced the closure of its game publishing division, YGG Play, and the layoff of 35 employees.
PANews reported on July 7th that Gabby Dizon, co-founder of the Web3 gaming guild Yield Guild Games (YGG), announced the closure of its game publishing division, YGG Play, affecting 35 positions. YGG will pay departing employees an additional eight weeks' salary during the transition period and assist them in finding new employment. The YGG Play platform and games such as LOL Land and Waifu Sweeper will continue operating until July 31st, after which they will be shut down. GIGACHAD BAT will move to delabs Official, while Ragnarok Breaker will continue to be operated by Planetarium HQ.
Microsoft is mobilizing 6,000 employees to form a new department to help customers adopt artificial intelligence.
Odaily Odaily reports that Microsoft (MSFT.O) is forming a new 6,000-person division to help enterprises with the technical and strategic work of deploying artificial intelligence. Microsoft stated that the division's employees will possess extensive experience in engineering, corporate training, and management, as well as industry-specific expertise. Judson Altoff, CEO of Microsoft's Commercial Business, said that closer collaboration with customers will help them implement AI more efficiently and will also inform Microsoft's own product development decisions. (Jinshi)
CNBC: Some companies that laid off employees due to AI are now regretting it and are rehiring.
According to a CNBC report on July 1st, some companies that previously laid off employees citing AI as a reason have begun rehiring, citing the failure of automated systems to fully handle related tasks. Analysts believe that increasing AI usage while cutting staff is not necessarily the best path to drive business growth. Ford is one of the latest companies to adjust its direction. Ford is rehiring hundreds of experienced engineers to address quality issues that automated systems cannot resolve. Charles Poon, Ford's vice president of hardware engineering, stated, "AI is a very good tool, but its effectiveness depends on the quality of the information you use to train it." Commonwealth Bank of Australia and IBM are also re-emphasizing human capital after layoffs and investments in AI technology. Last year, Commonwealth Bank of Australia laid off more than 40 customer service staff and replaced them with AI voice robots, but the system could not meet the demand, leading to an increase in calls, and the bank subsequently withdrew its layoff decision. IBM previously used AI to replace some human resources functions; the system could handle about 94% of routine requests, but could not handle the remaining 6%, including those involving ethical dilemmas. IBM subsequently announced plans to triple its hiring for entry-level positions in the US by 2026. An Orgvue report revealed that 39% of business leaders had laid off employees due to AI deployments, with 55% admitting that their layoff decisions were flawed. Robert Half data showed that 32% of US hiring managers said they had canceled a position primarily due to AI, subsequently rehiring for the same or similar roles. Capitol Technology University stated that AI is changing the workplace, but companies are finding that human-machine collaboration is more valuable than completely replacing human workers.
BNB Chain Releases 2026 Second Half Technology Roadmap: BSC Throughput Target to Double
Odaily Odaily reports that BNB Chain has released its technology roadmap for the second half of 2026, announcing that it will continue to optimize speed, throughput, and protocol stability, and plans to double the throughput of the BSC mainnet again, while developing a new generation of Layer 1 architecture for the next decade. BNB Chain stated that in the first half of 2026, BSC completed several performance upgrades, including reducing the block interval from 750 milliseconds to 450 milliseconds, decreasing the memory finality time from 1125 milliseconds to 650 milliseconds, and increasing the baseline throughput from approximately 2800 TPS to approximately 5200 TPS. At the middleware level, BNB Chain also advanced the construction of AI agents and payment infrastructure, including launching BNB Agent Studio and BNB Agent SDK to support the deployment of self-governed on-chain AI agents; it also continued to improve the Middleware Payment Protocol (MPP) SDK and explored institutional-grade privacy frameworks. For the second half of 2026, BNB Chain has proposed three core objectives: Double the throughput: Through BEP-675, BAL integration and EVM execution optimization, the BSC mainnet performance is further improved, with the long-term goal of achieving a 10x performance increase for the entire BNB Chain; Reduce the impact of network congestion: Improve stability during peak periods through resource isolation, dedicated transaction channels, and a transaction inclusion mechanism based on the FOCIL concept; Lowering the barrier to entry: Optimizing gas fee structures for different industries to reduce the cost for enterprises to enter Web2 and Web3 application scenarios.