Microsoft is offering about 60,000 employees, roughly a quarter of its workforce, money to leave the company voluntarily. The offer, announced on October 26 in a memo from chief people officer Amy Coleman, covers staff up to the level of vice president in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom. In the U.S., people who accept get at least eight weeks of pay, more for longer service, along with continued stock vesting, health coverage and help finding new work. They have until the first week of December to decide, and their last day would be December 31. Coleman called the program “new for us” and wrote, “We’ll learn from it.”

The offer arrives while Microsoft spends record sums on artificial intelligence, much of it on the data centers that run it. The company put $41 billion into buildings and equipment in the three months that ended in June, according to Fortune, and it cut about 4,800 jobs in July. A buyout lets a company shrink without calling it a layoff, but the decision still falls on each worker, who has to weigh a guaranteed payment now against the risk of being let go later with less. Microsoft has not said how many people it expects to leave. Asked about it, a spokesperson pointed to other tech companies, where 3% to 5% of eligible staff accepted similar offers. At that rate, between 1,800 and 3,000 people would be gone by December 31.