Here are the layoff severance packages Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other tech giants have promised
Google headquarters is seen in Mountain View, California, United States on September 26, 2022. (Photo by Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Tech companies have laid off tens of thousands of workers in recent months as the industry grapples with a reduced risk appetite from investors and increases in borrowing costs. Laid-off employees across the tech sector enter an uncertain job market, with headcount reductions taking place across all experience levels and teams. Few companies, with the possible exception of Apple, have been immune.
Laid-off workers will receive severance packages of varying size and duration, depending where they work. Here’s what some of the biggest tech names have promised their employees.
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Alphabet
On Friday, CEO Sundar Pichai said Google would lay off 12,000 workers across “product areas, functions, levels, and regions.” Laid-off U.S. employees will receive pay through the notification period and receive a 16-week base severance package with an additional two weeks for every year of employment at Google.
Laid-off employees would also have “at least” 16 weeks of share vesting accelerated, Pichai said in a memo to employees. Employees would also receive 6 months of healthcare coverage.
A Securities and Exchange Commission filing from Google parent company Alphabet shared the memo from Pichai, but did not specify the cost of the layoffs.
CNBC previously reported that employees had been anticipating layoffs with mounting anxiety, and on a heated Sept. 2022 all-hands meeting where employees pushed back against Pichai’s cost-cutting efforts.
Microsoft
On Wednesday, Microsoft said it was laying off 10,000 employees as the software maker anticipated slower revenue growth for the upcoming year. The cuts will take place through the end of March, with a spokesperson telling CNBC that sales and marketing teams would see deeper cuts than engineering.
CEO Satya Nadella said in an employee memo that some would learn this week if they were losing their jobs.
Benefit-eligible U.S. employees are to receive severance, six months of healthcare and stock vesting, and 60 days of notice, Nadella wrote. The Microsoft CEO had already alluded to potential cost-cutting efforts in an interview with CNBC-TV18.
“We will have to also get our own sort of operational focus on making sure our expenses are in line with our revenue growth,” Nadella said.
Microsoft will take a $1.2 billion impairment as a result of its restructuring and layoff efforts.
Amazon
Amazon has been going through rolling layoffs since last year. In November, it began job cuts that primarily affected units like recruiting and devices and services. At the time, the company offered its devices and services employees a severance package that included a separation payment, transitional health benefits, and job placement.
Earlier this week, it commenced its latest wave of layoffs, with the deepest cuts being felt in its retail and human resources divisions.
For retail employees in the U.S., Amazon is offering full pay and benefits over a 60-day period where Amazon will continue to keep them on the payroll, but they won’t be expected to keep working. After that period, Amazon will offer laid off employees several weeks of severance depending on the length of time with the company, a separation payment, transitional health benefits and job placement.
Amazon’s severance package appears similar for affected employees in other units. Human resources head Beth Galetti said the company will offer a separation payment, health benefits as applicable by country and job placement.
It’s unclear if Amazon’s severance package includes any provisions that would allow employees to accelerate the vesting of stock compensation. This matters to Amazon employees, as the company’s compensation has historically been weighted heavily to stock. An Amazon spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Salesforce
CEO Marc Benioff told employees on Jan. 4 that Salesforce would reduce headcount by about 10%, or more than 7,000 workers, in response to a challenging economic environment. Laid-off employees would receive a minimum of “nearly” five months of pay. Benioff’s letter to employees also said that laid-off employees would receive health insurance benefits and career resources for an unclear duration.
Some employees who lost their jobs were notified the same day.
“Those outside the U.S. will receive a similar level of support,” Benioff wrote. The company anticipated taking a one to $1.4 billion impairment related to severance payments and “employee transition” amongst other things, according to an 8-K filing.
Benioff told employees more layoffs could be coming, just days after announcing those January cuts.
Meta
CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on Nov. 9 that over 11,000 jobs would be cut as part of an effort to become a “leaner and more efficient company.” Meta shares had been heavily bruised for months prior, and investors had begun to more actively criticize Zuckerberg’s expensive pivot to virtual reality.
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., center, departs from federal court in San Jose, California, US, on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
At the time, Zuckerberg promised “every” laid-off employee 16 weeks of severance, plus two weeks for every year of service, as well as RSU vesting and health insurance coverage for a predetermined amount of time.
In Dec. 2022, some laid off workers from a non-traditional apprenticeship program told CNBC that they were receiving substandard severance packages compared to other recently laid off employees. Instead of Zuckerberg’s promised 16 weeks, they received only 8 weeks of base pay, amongst other material differences.
Layoffs at Twitter began shortly after Elon Musk completed his takeover deal in 2022. Twitter had been expected to lay off over 3,700 employees, or over 50% of its workforce. Ultimately, many more employees quit after Musk announced that Twitter employees would be expected to commit to a “hardcore” work environment.
Under the terms of Musk’s buyout deal, existing severance agreements were to be honored by new management. But a group of Twitter employees filed suit in November, shortly after layoffs were executed, accusing Twitter of laying them off in violation of California’s layoff-notification law.
Musk had previously said that laid-off employees would receive three months of severance pay, but some Twitter employees claimed that in return for a non-disparagement agreement and a legal waiver, Twitter would offer them only one month of severance.
The class action was updated shortly after filing with allegations that Twitter was offering some laid-off employees half of what they had been promised.
Twitter also laid off over 4,000 contract workers without giving them prior notice, CNBC previously reported.
CNBC’s Annie Palmer, Jonathan Vanian, Jennifer Elias, Jordan Novet, Lora Kolodny, Ashley Capoot, and Sofia Pitt contributed to this report.
The U.K. and Germany are emerging as key hubs for a new wave of AI defense startups, as Europe scrambles to rearm amid rising geopolitical tensions.
Private funding for defense startups across the region has ramped up in recent years, with investors looking to tap into increasing government military budgets, driven by the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war and pressure from the Trump administration.
But it’s ecosystems in the U.K. and Germany that are seeing the most activity. The majority of the biggest rounds across the sector have been for startups based in those two countries, with both emerging as key launchpads into new markets and battlefield training.
David Ordonez, senior associate at NATO Innovation Fund, told CNBC that this was “thanks to the scientific expertise of their talent base, national commitments to treat this sector as an economic engine for growth and a manufacturing base that enables the rapid scaling of breakthrough innovation.”
‘Visible pathways to procurement’
Venture capital for European defense startups has spiked as members of the NATO military alliance have agreed to increase security spending to 5% of gross domestic product, and defense departments in London and Berlin have increasingly signaled a willingness to adopt new technology built by younger players in the market.
Investors, buoyed by the promise of commercial deals, have funneled a record $4.3 billion into the sector since the start of 2022, according to Dealroom — nearly four times the funds deployed in the previous four years.
Germany’s AI drone makers Helsing and Quantum Systems hit valuations of 12 and 3 billion euros this year, respectively, after rounds worth hundreds of millions of euros. In the U.K., manufacturing platform PhysicsX, which works with defense companies, raised $155 million this year, and missile interception startup Cambridge Aerospace reportedly picked up a $100 million round in August.
The U.K. government’s Strategic Defence Review in June proposed boosting spending on novel tech and streamlining procurement processes, as well as unveiling a £5 billion tech investment package.
“We see a system increasingly open to non-traditional primes, supported by wider investment in skills and technology,” Karl Brew, head of defense at Portuguese-U.K. drone startup Tekever, told CNBC.
Tekever, which became a unicorn this year, announced a major contract to supply uncrewed aerial systems to the Royal Air Force in May. Helsing has several contracts with the U.K. government, and U.S.-based Anduril signed a £30 million contract for its attack drones in March.
Tekever’s AR3 EVO drone undergoing pre-flight checks prior to being launched. Credit: Tekever
Germany announced its defense spending would rise to upwards of 100 billion euros — a record figure since the German reunification — from 2026, and also changed procurement processes to make it easier for startups to participate.
While most European governments have ramped up defense spending, Germany stands out as having “visible pathways from prototype to major procurement [for startups] that many other European markets still do not provide,” Meghan Welch, managing director at financial advisory firm BGL, told CNBC.
Helsing and attack drone startup Stark are both in line to win a contract for kamikaze drones, the Financial Times reported in October. Helsing and Stark declined to comment to CNBC about this.
Legacy infrastructure
Germany’s industrial heritage has also created talent pipelines and infrastructure that startups are tapping into.
“Germany has the industrial base, the infrastructure and the technical talent to produce the next-generation technologies NATO urgently needs,” Philip Lockwood, international managing director of Stark, told CNBC.
Founded in 2024, Stark is building attack and reconnaissance drones and has raised $100 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Peter Thiel’s Thiel Capital, and the NATO Innovation Fund.
Stark’s Virtus drone
“Many of Europe’s best engineers developed their expertise in Germany’s industrial and technological sectors, which have long led in hardware, software, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience,” Lockwood said.
The U.K.’s broader ecosystem is also a decisive factor in its appeal as a defense base, said Tekever’s Brew. “It brings together world-class universities and R&D centres with a dense network of aerospace, software and advanced-manufacturing suppliers,” he said.
Launchpads
Another key driver of defense tech in the U.K. and Germany is that both countries serve as launchpads into new markets or frontline training.
The U.K. has had a security and defense partnership with Australia and the U.S. since 2021, known as AUKUS, which has lifted certain export controls and restrictions on technology sharing between the nations.
“As part of AUKUS, the move into the UK was a natural entry point into Europe,” Rich Drake, managing director at Anduril UK, told CNBC.
Alongside signing contracts totalling nearly £30 million for its attack drones earlier this year, Anduril also has plans to open a new manufacturing and R&D facility in the UK.
Anduril UK’s Seabed Sentry. Credit: Anduril UK
“[AUKUS] allows us to work with the MOD [Ministry of Defence], align on operational needs and accelerate the deployment of leading autonomous systems in a context where trust, shared priorities and strategic alignment matter as much as technology,” Drake said.
U.S. defense startups looking to sell into European markets have also often chosen London as a base from which to expand across the region. Second Front Systems and Applied Intuition expanded into the country in 2023 and 2025, respectively.
“Given the history of the special relationship between the US and the UK, the UK serves as an excellent launching pad into the rest of the European market,” said Enrique Oti, chief strategy officer at Second Front Systems.
The U.K. can also serve as a base for European defense startups with global ambitions, added Dmitrii Ponomarev, product manager at VanEck.
“In practice the UK is becoming the interoperability testbed and politically acceptable landing zone for tech flowing in both directions,” Ponomarev told CNBC.
“If you can win a pilot with UK forces, comply with UK/US-aligned security and export regimes and operate in English with UK industrial and legal standards, you look much more ready to US primes, Department of War programs and AUKUS-related efforts.”
In 2025, some of Europe’s best-funded defense startups, including Helsing, Quantum Systems and Stark, announced factories, offices, or investments in the country.
Further east, Germany’s role as one of the largest donors of military aid to Ukraine has given the country’s startups a “front row seat for battlefield feedback,” said Ponomarev.
Quantum Systems has deployed its reconnaissance tech in Ukraine and Helsing announced in February it would produce thousands of strike drones for the country.
Despite the advances, analysts, investors and startup execs all caution there’s more work to be done to create the conditions for building global defense startups in the UK and Germany.
“Scaling remains difficult without continued political and procurement reform,” Ponomarev told CNBC.
“The UK still struggles with slow procurement cycles, clearance bottlenecks and a shortage of security-approved technical talent,” he added. Germany’s biggest obstacles are bureaucracy, strict export controls and heavy dependence on a single customer — the country’s armed forces, Ponomarev added.
BLG’s Welch said the winners of Europe’s AI defense boom “are likely to be companies that can master both the political economy, including export rules, alliances and public narratives, and the technology race, positioning themselves as enablers of national sovereignty rather than disruptors of it.”
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