Microsoft said on Thursday that it is making a $1 million donation to the inauguration fund of President-elect Donald Trump.
TakeAway Points:
- Microsoft has contributed $500,000 for President-elect Donald Trump’s first term and is now contributing $1 million to his inauguration fund.
- Trump will be in charge of favourable AI policy for the next four years, according to the corporation.
- Microsoft is cutting a small percentage of jobs across departments based on performance.
- “When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email, confirming the job cuts.
Microsoft contributes $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund
The software maker is now more closely aligned with its highly valued peers in the technology industry. Google said earlier Thursday that it’s donating $1 million to the Trump fund, and Meta offered the same amount in December. Amazon was reportedly looking to make a similar contribution.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in December that he would contribute $1 million individually, and Axios reported last week that Apple CEO Tim Cook will do the same. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and the world’s richest person, has been advising Trump as he prepares to return to the White House following the inauguration later this month.
Microsoft also contributed $500,000 to the inauguration fund for Trump’s first term and gave the same amount to President Joe Biden’s fund, a Microsoft spokesperson said.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, has met with Trump on multiple occasions, including over negotiations surrounding a possible acquisition of TikTok in the U.S. in 2020. Nadella also joined a Trump roundtable of technology executives from around the country in 2017.
Microsoft is hoping that under Trump, the U.S. will push artificial intelligence policy in a favorable direction.
“The United States needs a smart international strategy to rapidly support American AI around the world,” Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, wrote in a blog post last week.
Microsoft affirms department-wide performance-based layoffs
Microsoft is cutting a small percentage of jobs across departments based on performance, the company said on Wednesday.
“At Microsoft, we focus on high-performance talent,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email on Wednesday. “We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”
Business Insider reported on the plans late Tuesday.
The job cuts will affect less than 1% of employees, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named in order to discuss private information.
Microsoft had 228,000 employees at the end of June. While the company’s net income margin of nearly 38% is close to its highest since the early 2000s, Microsoft’s stock underperformed its peers last year, rising 12% while the Nasdaq gained 29%.
Microsoft’s latest cuts are slim compared with recent downsizing efforts.
Microsoft previous labour cut down
In early 2023, the company laid off 10,000 employees and consolidated leases. In January 2024, three months after completing the $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft’s gaming unit shed 1,900 jobs to reduce overlap.
As 2025 begins, Microsoft faces a more tenuous relationship with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, which the company has backed to the tune of more than $13 billion. The partnership helped propel Microsoft’s market cap past $3 trillion last year.
Over the summer, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used the phrase “cooperation tension” while discussing the relationship with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley on a podcast released last month.
Meanwhile, the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant, which draws on OpenAI technology, has yet to become pervasive in business. Analysts at UBS said in a note last month that they came away from Microsoft’s Ignite conference with the impression that Copilot rollouts “have been a bit slow/underwhelming.”
Microsoft is still touting its growth opportunities. Finance chief Amy Hood said in October that revenue growth from Microsoft’s Azure cloud will speed up in the first half of this year because of greater AI infrastructure capacity.
