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.
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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