Oracle cuts 21,000 jobs as AI adoption and massive infrastructure investments reshape workforce

Oracle's 21,000 layoffs help drive its debt-fueled AI investments

The growing use of AI contributed to Oracle laying off 21,000 workers in a year, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday. In its annual regulatory filing for the fiscal year ending May 31, Oracle said it has 141,000 full-time employees. In its 2025 filing, Oracle said it had 162,000 employees. The reported 12.9 percent reduction followed March reports of mass layoffs at the database management software company. "[T]he adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the filing reads. However, the job cuts are also tied to large capital expenditure to build Oracle's data center infrastructure to support AI workloads. "The majority of the initiatives undertaken by the 2026 Restructuring Plan were effected to implement our continued emphasis in developing, marketing, selling, and delivering our cloud-based offerings," this week's filing reads. Oracle plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in 2026 to expand its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure for customers like OpenAI, xAI, AMD, Nvidia, and Meta, it said in February. About half of that funding will come through debt, with the remainder coming from equity. When Oracle announced this, investors had already been concerned about Oracle's growing debt to fuel its AI efforts. Overall, Oracle has over $120 billion in debt, per its fiscal year 2026 earnings report. In February, bondholders sued Oracle, claiming that they lost money because Oracle hid the need to raise its debt to build its AI infrastructure, Reuters reported. Investors have also been concerned about Oracle's reliance on OpenAI, a customer that is not yet profitable and is reportedly losing billions of dollars a year. Analysts noted that Oracle's workforce reduction will help the company's cash flow. In March, Barclays said that Oracle makes less profit per employee than its rivals, CNBC reported at the time. In its SEC filing, Oracle said it spent $1.8 billion on restructuring costs in its fiscal year, which is a 481 percent increase from the prior fiscal year's $374 million. Oracle also noted the drawbacks frequently associated with mass layoffs, including the potential for "reduced productivity" and "shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention." "As our cloud and AI businesses grow, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world," Oracle said in a statement to CNBC. While generative AI has reignited concerns about AI taking over jobs, Oracle demonstrates one way AI can contribute to job losses beyond direct human replacements. That said, AI is increasingly common for companies to cite when letting workers go. "AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs, and the primary industry citing it is technology," Andy Challenger, CRO at outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a May 2026 report released in June. "Technology, already the year's biggest job cutter, saw its steepest cuts since early 2023, even as it remains the sector with the most hiring plans this year." The outplacement firm reported in January that AI had been cited for 71,825 "job cut announcements" from 2023 to 2025.

The running list: major tech layoffs in 2026 where employers cited AI

Oracle disclosed Monday that it has reduced its workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months, a decline of 13%, which means more cuts than was previously known, including jobs eliminated because of AI. "The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the company said in an annual financial regulatory filing. The revelation puts new numbers to what feels to many in the tech industry like an epidemic: companies reporting record revenues while simultaneously culling their workforces, pointing to AI as both the engine of growth and the reason for the cuts. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in years in May, and AI was the most-cited reason, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. We recently wrote about why that rationale is something companies may want to rethink, not least because for many of these companies, the headcount they're now cutting was hired during the pandemic hiring surge, raising questions about what's really going on. Below, a running look -- in reverse chronological order -- at the bigger tech companies that have announced significant layoffs this year with AI as a stated factor. GitLab -- June 3, 2026. In one of the most recent cuts on this list, GitLab laid off roughly 350 workers, about 14% of its staff, to fund AI infrastructure investment and handle surging traffic from AI workflows. CEO Bill Staples said agentic workloads are "pushing competitors to the brink" and that the company had begun a "generational rebuild" of its core infrastructure to support what he called 100x growth requirements. GitLab is exiting 22 countries, flattening management layers, and partnering with an unspecified AI lab to rebuild its platform for agent-scale workloads. The company reported first-quarter revenue of $264 million, up 23% year-over-year, and expects to incur $30 to $35 million in restructuring costs. Google -- ongoing through May. Alphabet's Google has quietly cut employees across its Cloud division, including its Threat Intelligence Group and Mandiant-linked cybersecurity staff, even as Cloud revenue grew 63% to exceed $20 billion for the first time and its backlog nearly doubled to over $460 billion. Over the past year, Google has cut more than a third of the managers overseeing small teams -- 35% fewer managers with fewer direct reports. Unlike most companies on this list, Google has never announced a single overall number -- the cuts have come through a rolling performance review process, a voluntary buyout program, and structural reorganizations, with outside estimates putting the 2026 total at between 1,500 and 3,000+ engineers. Intuit -- May 20, 2026. Intuit announced plans to eliminate roughly 3,000 jobs -- about 17% of its total workforce -- in a restructuring centered on reducing complexity and reallocating resources toward AI. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reportedly told staff the company is reducing complexity and simplifying the structure, so it can deliver better products. Meta -- May 20-21, 2026. Meta laid off about 8,000 employees, roughly 10% of its workforce, while moving about 7,000 employees into new AI-focused roles (that they reportedly hate). Zuckerberg told staff the cuts were necessary because "success isn't a given" in AI. Cisco -- May 14, 2026. Cisco announced it's cutting nearly 4,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, despite reporting better-than-expected profit and revenue. CFO Mark Patterson said: "This was really not a savings-driven restructure... this is more [about] realigning ... resources around silicon, optics, security and AI." Cloudflare -- May 7-8, 2026. Cloudflare cut about 20% of its workforce (1,100 people), reporting quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, up 34% year-over-year and the highest single quarter in company history. CEO Matthew Prince wrote that "the vast majority of those we laid off last week were measurers" -- middle management, finance, legal, internal auditing, and revenue recognition. General Motors -- May 12, 2026. GM eliminated 500 to 600 jobs, largely in IT roles in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan, saying it was reevaluating its workforce needs amid uncertain market conditions. A person familiar with the cuts told CNBC that AI played a role in the decision but that it wasn't the only reason. GM's statement said it was "transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future." Despite the cuts, the company still had roughly 80 open IT positions, including roles in AI, motorsports, and autonomous vehicles. Coinbase -- May 5, 2026. The crypto exchange said it was cutting about 700 employees, or 14% of its staff, as part of a restructuring aimed at addressing market volatility and increasing AI efficiency. The company flattened its organizational structure to five layers below the CEO and COO, and said it would experiment with "one-person teams" combining engineering, design, and product roles. CEO Brian Armstrong wrote that AI had changed the pace of work dramatically -- "engineers use AI to ship in days what used to take a team weeks" -- and that the company needed to "leverage AI across every facet of our jobs." PayPal -- May 5, 2026. PayPal announced plans to cut around 20% of its workforce over the next two to three years -- north of 4,500 jobs -- as part of a turnaround strategy centered on AI adoption and organizational simplification. CEO Enrique Lores told investors the company would "aggressively adopt AI" in its development processes and formed a new "AI transformation and simplification" team reporting directly to him, tasked with redesigning the company's processes "function by function." Lores framed the cuts as removing organizational layers, and said AI would extend well beyond coding into customer service, support operations, and risk management. Microsoft -- April-May 2026. Microsoft offered buyouts structured as voluntary separations, without disclosing how many employees these would impact. CFO Amy Hood said total headcount declined year-over-year in fiscal Q3, and is expected to keep declining as the company focuses on "building high-performing teams that operate with pace and agility" amid rising AI investment. Snap -- April 16, 2026. Snap cut roughly 16% of its global workforce -- about 1,000 full-time employees -- and closed more than 300 open roles, with CEO Evan Spiegel citing AI advancements as a key driver. "Rapid advancements in artificial intelligence enable our teams to reduce repetitive work, increase velocity, and better support our community, partners, and advertisers," Spiegel wrote in a memo filed with the SEC. The company said it had already seen small squads using AI tools to drive progress across Snapchat+, ad platform performance, and infrastructure efficiency. IBM -- rolling through 2026. Between Q4 2025 cuts and April 2026 Red Hat engineering reductions, estimates range from 3,000 to 9,000 U.S. positions eliminated, bringing IBM's cumulative total since September 2024 above 15,000. Bloomberg reported IBM plans to triple its U.S. entry-level hiring for AI and hybrid-cloud roles, even as roughly 200 HR positions were replaced by AI agents. An IBM spokesperson described the Q4 2025 round as a routine rebalancing affecting "a low single-digit percentage" of its global workforce. Atlassian -- March 11, 2026. Atlassian cut about 1,600 jobs (10% of its workforce) to "rebalance" toward AI and enterprise sales, even as shares rose nearly 2% on the news. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes said: "Our approach is not 'AI replaces people.' But it would be disingenuous to pretend AI doesn't change the mix of skills we need or the number of roles required in certain areas. It does." Dell -- Jan 30 (though disclosed in March 2026). Dell's total workforce fell about 10% in fiscal 2026 -- roughly 11,000 jobs -- to about 97,000 employees from 108,000 a year earlier, with $569 million spent on severance. The cuts came as Dell projected its AI-optimized server revenue could double in fiscal 2027. Oracle -- March 5-31, 2026. As noted above, Oracle began telling employees it would be cutting thousands of jobs via terminal emails. The cuts came even as Oracle posted $3.7 billion in quarterly net income, up 27% year-over-year, with remaining performance obligations up 325% to $553 billion -- savings redirected toward AI data centers. The cuts that would later total 21,000 over 12 months, as Oracle disclosed in its June 22 annual filing. Block -- February 26-27, 2026. Jack Dorsey's Block cut 4,000 jobs -- nearly half its workforce, down to under 6,000 from over 10,000. Dorsey wrote on X: "We're already seeing that the intelligence tools we're creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company." He added: "I think most companies are late. Within the next year, I believe the majority of companies will reach the same conclusion and make similar structural changes." Salesforce -- February 10, 2026. Salesforce laid off fewer than 1,000 employees across marketing, product management, data analytics, and its Agentforce AI unit. The company told Fortune, "Because of the benefits and efficiencies of Agentforce, we've seen the number of support cases we handle decline and we no longer need to actively backfill support engineer roles." This followed an earlier cut of about 4,000 customer-support roles, shrinking that team from roughly 9,000 to 5,000, with CEO Marc Benioff saying the company needed "less heads" because AI agents handle the work. Amazon -- January 28, 2026. Amazon cut 16,000 corporate jobs, following 14,000 cuts in October 2025 -- about 9% of its corporate workforce in three months. The company said it was part of "strengthen[ing] our organization by reducing layers, increasing ownership, and removing bureaucracy." CEO Andy Jassy had said in June 2025 that, "As we roll out more generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done. We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today... in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company."

Oracle lays off 21,000 employees in just 12 months due to AI adoption and costly AI infrastructure ambitions -- says layoffs will continue as internal AI deployment grows

The company claims the restructuring cost them almost $2 billion Oracle reduced its global workforce by 21,000 employees -- approximately 13% of its staff -- during the ⁠2026 fiscal year ending May 31, 2026. The tech giant officially disclosed details of the cuts in its annual financial regulatory filing on Monday, June 22, explicitly stating that AI adoption and automation directly replaced numerous roles. "The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the report said. Conversely, multiple reports indicate that the layoffs are mainly a capital reallocation strategy, as Oracle moves into AI infrastructure. According to the filing, the company ended the 2026 fiscal year with 141,000 employees, down from 162,000 at the same period last year. Oracle claims the restructuring cost it $1.84 billion in severance payments and other related costs, nearly 400% higher than the restructuring bill in the previous financial year. It also said in its filing that the cuts were due to various factors, including management and product changes, performance issues, and broader re-strategizing. Oracle signed a massive $300 billion, 5-year deal with OpenAI last year, and another with Meta, to provide AI compute power, as the company continues its aggressive expansion into AI cloud infrastructure. Unlike cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft, which fund AI builds through massive existing cash flows, Oracle is reportedly burning cash and issuing up to $40 billion in new debt and equity to stay competitive. The workforce reductions appear to be another means of funding. These cuts are yet another part of a wider worrying trend of tech industry layoffs, attributed to either AI adoption or plans to invest in AI infrastructure. We recently reported Meta's plans to cut 8,000 jobs to fund AI infrastructure. Tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have also announced job cuts to fund AI ambitions. Counting the Oracle cuts, more than 100,000 US tech workers have lost their jobs this year. Last month alone saw 40,000 AI-related job cuts, even as surveys indicate that executives are unsure of the benefits of AI replacement. There is also speculation that companies are using AI as an excuse to conduct layoffs for other reasons, a move that OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman, terms "AI washing". Our in-depth analysis breaks down the available stats and facts on this trend. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 employees amid AI adoption

June 22 (Reuters) - Oracle's (ORCL.N), opens new tab total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees, in fiscal 2026, as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business, partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations. The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31, 2026, compared with about 162,000 as of the same period last year, according to its annual report released on Monday. Oracle spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs related to the restructuring activities in fiscal ⁠2026, significantly higher than the $374 million spent in the previous fiscal year, the filing showed. It also said in its filing that the workforce adjustments were in response to various factors, including management and product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts and acquisitions. The decline in the workforce follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands of jobs. The company did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption, as 196 tech ⁠companies laid off more than 119,800 employees so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking sector-wide job cuts. A smaller player in the cloud-computing industry for a long time, Oracle has in recent months signed massive data-center deals with OpenAI and Meta ⁠to compete more forcefully with rivals such as Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab. However, unlike these tech giants who fund their substantial outlays through large cash flows, Oracle has had to resort to ⁠burning cash and issuing debt. Shares of the company were down about 10% this year. Oracle said earlier this month that it expects net capital expenditure of around $70 ⁠billion in its current fiscal year. To fund that, it will raise another $40 billion in debt and equity, including a previously announced $20 billion stock issuance. Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva and Sahal Muhammed Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Oracle shed 21,000 roles over the past year amid wave of AI layoffs from tech giants

"The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," Oracle said in the filing. The company spent $1.8 billion on restructuring costs, including severance payments and other exit costs, a jump from the $374 million it spent on restructuring the previous year. Oracle noted that the workforce changes can be "disruptive," including the increased restructuring costs and reduced productivity. "These types of restructurings may also lead to shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention," it said. Oracle told employees in March that it was cutting thousands of jobs as it faced investor pressure over raising huge amounts of debt for its AI infrastructure buildout. In January, Oracle announced plans to raise $50 billion in debt and equity. Meanwhile, its free cash flow in the last fiscal year came in at negative $23.7 billion, while capital expenditure jumped 162% to $55.7 billion.

Oracle laid off 21,000 employees over the past year, citing AI as one of the reasons - Engadget

The company says its AI adoption and deployment may result in further reductions. Back in March, it was widely reported that Oracle had sent anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 employees an email, notifying them that it was their last day with the company. Now, we have a more concrete number of people who had lost their jobs. In its annual regulatory filing, Oracle said that it employs approximately 141,000 people worldwide as of May 31, 2026. That's down 21,000 employees from the 162,000 people employed by the company in the same period last year. Around 49,000 of its current full-time employees are in the US, while 92,000 are employed internationally. It's not clear how many employees in the US were let go. In its filing, the company said that it has an "existing restructuring plan in place" and that it made and will continue to make adjustments to its workforce. It admitted that the "adoption and deployment of AI technologies" across its operations "have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions" to its numbers. The company had already spent $1.8 billion in restructuring costs, which include severance payments for laid-off employees. As Bloomberg had previously reported, Oracle cut thousands of jobs in order to have more readily available cash it can use for its AI data center buildouts. Other companies in the industry, such as Microsoft, had also cut jobs to fund the high upfront costs needed to build AI infrastructure and to adopt AI as a whole. Meta had also laid off 8,000 employees and reassigned 7,000 people to AI-focused roles. In Oracle's case, it's building data centers for its clients, with OpenAI being one of the biggest. If you'll recall, OpenAI struck a deal last year for Oracle to supply it with 4.5 gigawatts of US data center capacity, which will power the massive workload required by its large language models.

Oracle cuts 21,000 jobs, admits AI is reducing its workforce

Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years. TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust. A hot potato: As tech executives' narrative around AI-related job losses becomes one of "things aren't that bad" and even "what job losses?" Oracle has reduced its workforce by 21,000 people this fiscal year while acknowledging that AI played a big role in the cuts. The eliminations led to $1.8 billion in severance payments and other restructuring costs for Oracle, significantly higher than the $374 million restructuring costs it faced in the previous financial year. The software and cloud computing giant employed 141,000 people as of May 31, 2026, compared to 162,000 one year earlier, representing a 13% decline. There are several factors behind the cuts, according to Oracle's SEC filing. These include management and product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts, and acquisitions. A shortage of cash is also playing a part - Oracle's capital expenditures came to $55.7 billion in fiscal 2026 as it builds data center capacity. But there are no prizes for guessing one of the major driving forces. According to Oracle's SEC filing, "the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce." According to Layoffs.fyi, 121,462 tech employees have been laid off at 197 companies in 2026 so far. That's just 3,000 short of the entire number of cuts during the whole of 2025. The list of companies making layoffs as a direct or indirect result of AI keeps growing: Block, Cisco, Intuit, Snap, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Dell, Google, HP, and IBM, to name just a few. What's surprising is the sudden change in position from many tech executives and analysts. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said he was "delighted" his AI jobs apocalypse prediction hasn't come true, which might say more about his definition of an apocalypse than the state of the job market. Even Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, who once said AI could erase half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, has softened his stance. Possibly the most surprising revelation came from top Apollo economist Torsten Sløk, who said there was "zero evidence" of job losses because of AI, despite there being an awful lot of evidence to the contrary - including, most recently, Oracle's SEC filing. There is a potential bright spot, though. With multiple reports showing AI investment isn't resulting in the sort of returns or cost-cutting (if any) that were expected, a recent study found that around a third of companies that attempted to replace workers with AI have either rehired some of them or expressed regret over the decision. They'll likely regret it even more if - or when - the AI bubble bursts.

Tech giant Oracle sheds 21,000 jobs in a year as AI replaces some roles

US technology giant Oracle shed about 21,000 roles globally in the last year as it reshapes its business around artificial intelligence (AI), its latest annual report shows. The software and cloud computing firm says it had around 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from about 162,000 workers at the same time last year. The "deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the report says. The cuts are part of a wider trend among tech firms as they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on adopting AI and building infrastructure like data centres. Amazon and Facebook-owner Meta have cut thousands of job in recent months as they invest heavily in AI. More than 100,000 people at tech workers have been laid off in the past year, according to estimates from employment tracking firms. Oracle made "significant" job cuts in April, according to senior employees posting online, but the full extent of the layoffs had not been revealed until its annual report was filed. The firm said the cuts have led to about $1.8bn (£1.36bn) in severance payments and other restructuring costs in the past year. The sum is significantly higher than the $374m restructuring bill in the previous financial year. Oracle said that its restructuring efforts "can be disruptive". It warned that the reorganisation may lead to a shortage in skilled workers in certain roles, resulting in a loss of productivity that could impact its earnings. The BBC has contacted Oracle for further comment. Oracle has been in a race to roll out data centres for AI giants like OpenAI and Meta. The BBC previously reported that Oracle planned to spend at least $50bn on infrastructure this year. The company was co-founded by Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world, who also serves as Oracle's chief technology officer.

Oracle cuts 21,000 jobs, SEC filing blames AI

The enterprise software giant shed nearly 13 per cent of its workforce while spending $55.7 billion on data centres, a trade-off that produced negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion and the most candid admission yet that AI is replacing jobs at scale. Oracle's global workforce fell to 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from 162,000 a year earlier, a net reduction of roughly 21,000 people. The company's annual regulatory filing stated plainly that "the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce." It is a rare case of a major technology company putting the AI-replaces-jobs argument into a securities disclosure rather than an earnings script. The filing language means the company's lawyers are comfortable telling regulators what most chief executives only imply in conference calls. Where the cuts fell The deepest reductions hit Oracle Health, built on the $28.3 billion acquisition of electronic health records company Cerner, where an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 employees were let go, according to TD Cowen estimates. Legacy SaaS operations and revenue teams also took heavy losses, with some divisions losing roughly 30 per cent of staff. Teams working on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and AI services were largely spared, and some expanded. The company has described replacing entire database administration teams with AI agents, with one Austin-based unit of 47 database administrators reportedly having its workload taken over by automated systems now supervised by three senior architects, though that specific example comes from a Time report and could not be independently verified from Oracle's own disclosures. The money trail Oracle spent $1.84 billion on restructuring costs in fiscal 2026, including severance payments and other exit costs, up from $374 million the previous year. Capital expenditure jumped 162 per cent to $55.7 billion, almost entirely tied to its AI cloud and data centre buildout. The result was negative free cash flow of $23.7 billion, a figure that would be alarming for most companies but one Oracle is treating as a strategic investment. The company raised $30 billion in debt in February 2026 to fund Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and for fiscal 2027 it is guiding for roughly $70 billion in capex, plus another $20 to $25 billion it expects customers to repay. What it got in return The spending is producing results. Cloud Infrastructure revenue grew 93 per cent to $5.8 billion in the fourth quarter, and total cloud revenue for the full fiscal year reached $34 billion, up 39 per cent. Record fourth-quarter revenue of $19.2 billion was up 21 per cent year on year, and remaining performance obligations, a measure of future contracted revenue, jumped $85 billion in the quarter to $638 billion. Chairman Larry Ellison told analysts the company would "build more cloud infrastructure data centres than all our competitors combined." The broader pattern Oracle is not alone in converting payroll into data centre spending. Meta, Microsoft, and other Big Tech firms have collectively announced capital expenditure plans that could reach $700 billion this year while cutting thousands of jobs in functions they say AI can now perform. The difference is the candour. Most companies frame layoffs as "restructuring" or "efficiency measures," and describe AI as complementing rather than replacing workers. Oracle's SEC filing puts the substitution in writing. That makes it harder for the rest of the industry to maintain the polite fiction that the AI buildout and the layoffs are unrelated.

Oracle Cuts 21,000 Jobs in One Year, Blames AI For at Least Some

Over the past year, Oracle has cut 21,000 jobs, according to an SEC filing. Part of the reason is apparently AI. As published on Stock Titan, the filing says "the adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce." The relevant paragraph begins with bolded text reading, "Our periodic workforce restructurings and reorganizations can be disruptive," which certainly seems plausible. Oracle is a massive tech company best known for creating database software that became a staple during the 90s tech boom. Increasingly, however, Oracle is known for being a cloud computing provider. Its co-founder and former CEO, Larry Ellison, was briefly the richest man in the world last year amid market exuberance over AI. Ellison is also a close friend of President Trump. An anonymous Trump advisor reportedly told a Wired reporter last year that Ellison was a "shadow president of the United States." As noted by Bloomberg, Oracle had 162,000 employees about year ago, and now has 141,000. This has led to a series of changes that also resulted in "$1.8 billion in restructuring costs." The filing also says restructuring can bring about, "shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge and damage to employee morale and retention." During an earnings presentation in March, Oracle CEO Mike Sicilia said his company "is using the best AI coding tools and the best developers not only to accelerate our SaaS business, but to deliver solutions that enable entire ecosystems across numerous industries." In addition to using AI internally, Oracle just keeps spending money to build the data center capacity its customers, such as OpenAI, so desperately need -- gambling, essentially, that eventually companies like OpenAI will pay it so much for compute that it will be able to repay all its debt. In the last fiscal year, Oracle's capital expenditures came to $55.7 billion. An anonymously sourced Bloomberg article from March said Oracle's shortage of cash was leading to layoffs. That appears to be borne out by this latest filing

Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 employees amid AI adoption

It also said in its filing that the workforce adjustments were in response to various factors, including management and ⁠product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts and acquisitions. Oracle's total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees, in fiscal 2026, as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business, partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations. The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31, 2026, compared with about 162,000 as of the same period last ⁠year, ⁠according to its annual report released on Monday. Oracle spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs related to the restructuring activities in fiscal 2026, significantly higher than the $374 million spent in the previous fiscal year, the filing showed. It also said in its filing that the workforce adjustments were in response to various factors, including management and ⁠product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts and acquisitions. The decline in the workforce follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands ⁠of jobs. The company did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption, as 196 tech companies laid off more than 119,800 employees so far this year, according to Layoffs. fyi, a website tracking sector-wide job cuts. A smaller player in the cloud-computing industry for a long time, Oracle has in recent months signed massive data-center deals with OpenAI and Meta to compete more forcefully with rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft. However, unlike these tech giants who fund ⁠their substantial outlays through large cash flows, Oracle has had to resort to burning cash and issuing debt. Shares of the company were down about 10% this year. Oracle said earlier this month that it expects net capital expenditure of around $70 billion in its current fiscal year. To fund that, it will raise another $40 billion in debt and equity, including a previously announced $20 billion stock issuance.

Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 amid AI adoption

STORY: Oracle's total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees, in its fiscal 2026. It's as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business... partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations. The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31... down from about 162,000 as of the same period last year. Oracle's annual filing said it spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs. It follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands of jobs. The company did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption. 196 tech companies laid off more than 119,000 employees so far this year... That's according to a website tracking sector-wide job cuts. Oracle has in recent months signed massive data-center deals with OpenAI and Meta... to compete more forcefully with rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft. However, unlike these tech giants who fund their substantial outlays through large cash flows, Oracle has had to resort to burning cash and issuing debt. Shares of the company are down about 10% this year.

Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 employees amid AI adoption

June 22 (Reuters) - Oracle's total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees in fiscal 2026, as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business, partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations. The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31, 2026, compared with about 162,000 as of the same period last year, according to its annual report released on Monday. Oracle spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs related to the restructuring activities in fiscal 2026, significantly higher than the $374 million spent in the previous fiscal year, the filing showed. It also said in its filing that the workforce adjustments were in response to various factors, including management and product changes, performance issues, strategic shifts and acquisitions. The decline in the workforce follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands of jobs. The company did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption, as 196 tech companies laid off more than 119,800 employees so far this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website tracking sector-wide job cuts. (Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva)