As Microsoft January 2026 Lay-off Rumours Swirl, Microsoft CCO Says They’re “100 percent made up’

Don’t you just love the internet? While it wouldn’t surprise me to once again see Microsoft pursue their foolish AI dreams by laying off yet more people, it seems the reports you might have seen online are apparently not just incorrect, but ‘100 percent made up’. So what’s going on?

As is the case nowadays, the race to be first with reporting is important, with accuracy often seen as a secondary concern. Earlier today, a website named ‘Tipranks’ shared a report that rumours of layoffs were out there. No source is listed, just that there were ‘rumours’. Perhaps they came from HR Digest, who took a more speculative approach, that, like us, suspected layoffs for January 2026 at Microsoft were certainly on the cards.

Even well-known Xbox leaker ‘eXtas1s’ picked up on it, sharing a tweet where he stated (translated via X) “Microsoft is considering massive layoffs in January (between 11,000 and 22,000 positions) as AI costs rise — Worker reports point to the Azure cloud teams, the Xbox unit, and global sales as key focus areas.“

Exactly where this information is coming from is not entirely clear, except that it is January, and Microsoft has a history of making such announcements. To finally put the rumour to bed, Frank X Shaw, Chief Communications Officer over at Microsoft, responded to the tweet in a fairly direct way, saying “100 percent made up / speculative / wrong.” When challenged by another user who said they would bookmark the tweet so they could come back to it (presumably in the event mass layoffs did occur), Frank confidently replied – “I eagerly await.“

Now, does that mean there’ll be zero layoffs? I’m not so sure about that, as it’s become fairly standard operating procedure for Microsoft – but perhaps there’s hope that if there are, they won’t be as brutal as seen previously.

Fingers crossed, hey? (I can’t imagine the morale working with that threat looming every so often.)

Do you think there’ll be more layoffs at Microsoft early this year? Let us know in the XboxEra Forums or make some noise in the lively XboxEra Community Discord Server. If you’re looking to be a bigger part of an amazing community, then either choice is a good one!

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