Microsoft is offering up to 25% of its staff a buyout package.
They need to cut staff to pay for their AI build-out, so AI is already clobbering jobs. They’d better hope AI starts to actually earn back all of this money that’s going into it.
We’re staring down the potential for an extremely serious combination of economic forces. If a lot of people end up without jobs because of AI, and then AI doesn’t pay out as expected because everybody’s out of work, there will be a lot of data centers nobody needs. The venture capital and private equity markets won’t get payback on their AI investments. They’ll collapse, taking Wall Street with them, and welcome back to 2008.
But first, the 2026 mid-term elections!