Microsoft held an invite-only Sting concert for execs in Davos the day before the company announced layoffs of 10,000 employees
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- Microsoft held a private Sting performance this week, The Wall Street Journal reported.
- The tech giant's executives attended the concert, which took place on Tuesday, per the report.
- Microsoft announced on Wednesday that it would be laying off 10,000 employees.
Microsoft executives experienced a private Sting performance in Davos on Tuesday, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal — the day before the tech giant disclosed plans to lay off 10,000 employees.
The event was an "an intimate gathering of 50 or so people," according to the Journal's report, and took place as the Swiss resort destination is hosting business leaders for its annual World Economic Forum.
It was the next day that Microsoft's chief executive officer Satya Nadella told employees about the company's plans to cut some 10,000 jobs, which he wrote is "less than 5%" of its overall headcount, over the coming months.
"The senior leadership team and I are committed that as we go through this process, we will do so in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible," Nadella wrote in a blog post on Wednesday.
Microsoft — which is considering a $10 billion investment in ChatGPT's maker Open AI, per Semafor — would also still hire in "key strategic areas," according to Nadella's post.
Representatives for Microsoft didn't immediately respond to Insider's emailed request for comment on Thursday morning.
Pop stars have commanded handsome fees for private shows, with performers like Sting charging between $100,000 to $500,000 per virtual event during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to a Rolling Stone report last year.
Microsoft's planned cuts are the latest in a slew of layoffs hitting workers in the tech and finance industries.
Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said it plans to lay off some 18,000 employees, while Salesforce also announced anticipated layoffs of about 10 percent of its employees. This month, Goldman Sachs also began laying off the more than 3,000 employees it planned to cut, just ahead of bonus season.
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