Google has extended voluntary buyout offers to several countries this year in a bid to keep its spending under control amid rising AI costs, Reuters has reported.

The tech company, owned by Alphabet, confirmed to the newswire that it had begun offering voluntary exit packages to some employees across Canada, France, Germany, Japan and Switzerland.

Reuters was unable to ascertain how many employees have accepted the latest round of offers, which follow a similar scheme last year.

“In 2025, some of our teams introduced a voluntary ⁠exit program with severance,” a Google spokesperson told Reuters in a statement. “This past summer, in June, we expanded this program globally in a few countries to support our important work ahead.”

The news comes amid mass AI spending by the company, which has dismayed investors and led to a $500 billion fall in Alphabet’s market cap last week.

According to Reuters, Alphabet has grown its workforce over the past year, but focused its efforts on moving resources toward areas it considers a priority, such as AI and cloud computing.

Employees at Google DeepMind, its AI lab, and Google Cloud, its cloud computing division, have been excluded from previous buyout offers, and Reuters reported that this expansion seems to follow the same pattern.

Citing three people familiar with the matter, the newswire said that the package was offered to teams in multiple Swiss divisions, but not those working in DeepMind. At least four employees in a team of around 50 had accepted the offer, they said.

Last week, Microsoft reportedly launched a similar scheme for a quarter of its staff in a bid to control costs as its AI usage has grown.

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