Google is expanding its voluntary exit, or “buyout,” program beyond the US and UK to countries including Switzerland, while keeping its AI and cloud teams largely out of scope. Reuters says Google widened the program in June to parts of Canada, France, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland, adding to similar offers it’s used over the past year. Officially, it’s framed as an option for employees who feel out of step with the company’s pace, but it also lines up with Alphabet’s bigger budget tension: AI is expensive, and management has signaled that AI and Google Cloud remain hiring priorities. By excluding Google Cloud and the AI lab DeepMind, Google can trim headcount in less strategic areas without slowing the teams it’s betting on to drive growth. In Switzerland – home to a major Zurich engineering hub and about 5,000 Google employees – people familiar with the matter told Reuters the offer was one month’s salary per year of service, capped at 12 months. For Alphabet, buyouts can lower ongoing payroll costs, but they usually show up first as a one-time severance expense, making quarterly costs look uneven. Reuters notes the risk: voluntary exits can be followed by layoffs in the same area if enough people don’t take the offer.