Microsoft employees have voluntarily disclosed how much they spend on artificial intelligence tools along with their salaries, exposing internal AI usage and the compensation system.

Business Insider reported on Aug. 24 that an internal spreadsheet anonymously filled out by about 600 U.S. employees included base pay, raise rates, cash bonuses and stock awards. This year it added a new field, "AI $ Usage Per Month", listing AI usage costs over the past 28 days as tallied through internal tools. A Microsoft spokesperson said the AI usage tracking tool is still in an early testing stage.

Of the roughly 600 entries, about 350 responses listed AI spending. The median reported amount was $300 (about 415,000 won). The highest figure was $28,000 (about 40 million won), written by an employee in Microsoft’s customer and partner solutions organization. Some employees said they spent only a few dollars a month, showing a very large gap in AI use by organization.

Still, there was no sign that higher AI use led to higher compensation. No meaningful correlation was found between AI spending and bonus ratings, annual pay raise rates or promotion prospects. There was also no evidence that employees with higher AI usage received better evaluations or promotion opportunities.

The data is seen as an unusual example showing Microsoft’s talent compensation strategy across the organization. The company is investing hundreds of billions of dollars in AI infrastructure while competing for engineers and researchers with Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic to secure talent that will affect future investment returns. Stock awards, which are larger than annual raise rates or bonuses, are seen as a key tool Microsoft uses to retain such talent.

The spreadsheet is not an official tally, which is a limitation. Because employees wrote it voluntarily and anonymously to increase wage transparency, it is hard to see it as representative of the whole company. Microsoft had 223,000 employees as of June 30, so about 600 responses and about 350 that listed AI spending are a very limited sample. The company also carried out large-scale layoffs in July.

Employees with higher salaries or longer tenures tend to respond to such spreadsheets at lower rates, raising the possibility that the disclosed pay levels may appear lower than the company-wide average. Last year, Microsoft’s internal pay guidelines were also reported, revealing pay levels generally offered to new hires in U.S. engineering and research roles.

The key question is whether this AI usage tracking system will later be linked to performance reviews or budget allocation. For now, usage varies widely and no direct link to compensation has been confirmed, leaving the next point of interest whether Microsoft will develop the data into a productivity metric or keep it as a simple cost-control tool.