Google, owned by Alphabet, has expanded its voluntary exit packages for employees to five more countries as it looks to control rising costs linked to heavy spending on artificial intelligence (AI). The company confirmed that it began offering the packages in June to some staff in Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland. It is not clear how many employees have accepted the offers, which had not been reported before.
A Google spokesperson said some teams introduced a voluntary exit program with severance in 2025. “This past summer, in June, we expanded this program globally in a few countries to support our important work ahead,” the spokesperson said. The latest buyouts follow similar programs offered since last year to employees in some divisions in the US and Britain. Executives have described the program as an option for staff who no longer feel aligned with the company’s pace or direction. In at least one case, the company followed its voluntary offers with a round of layoffs.
The move comes as growing AI spending has unnerved Wall Street and dented Alphabet’s stock price. Last week, Microsoft offered voluntary buyouts to 60,000 employees to contain costs. Alphabet’s workforce has grown steadily in recent quarters, but the company has sought to shift resources toward priority areas.
Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi has repeatedly named AI and cloud computing as key hiring priorities in quarterly earnings presentations. Employees in Google Cloud and the AI unit DeepMind were excluded from earlier buyout offers. The latest expansion appears to follow the same pattern.
In Switzerland, where Google employs about 5,000 people and runs a major engineering hub in Zurich, three people familiar with the matter said the program covered multiple divisions but excluded DeepMind. Google announced the packages in mid-June and gave responses to applicants by mid-July. Employees began leaving in August. Staff who accepted received one month’s salary for each year of service, up to a maximum of 12 months. One person said at least four employees in a team of about 50 accepted the offer.
Google laid off more than 200 employees in Switzerland in 2023, which led to staff protests and a walkout.
