Oracle Announces “Significant” Layoffs As AI Pressures Squeeze

Tech giant Oracle has announced a round of “significant” layoffs as the firm moves to boost investments in AI.

The job cuts have affected “senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers, and technical specialists,” according to senior manager Michael Shepherd. While Oracle has yet to comment on the cuts, Shepherd wrote on Linkedin that the layoffs were not performance related.

“The individuals affected were not let go because of anything they did or didn’t do,” his post said.

Many other former workers took to social media to explain that they had received notice of their termination of employment yesterday morning in an email, informing them that they would get one month of severance pay.

The email, as seen by Business Insider, reads: “After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day.”

While Oracle’s CTO Larry Ellison is one of the richest people in the world, the firm itself has felt the pressure from investors to return on their investments in AI, with intense spending on its own cloud infrastructure as well as deals with OpenAI.

The software and cloud infrastructure firm has been turning to the debt market to fund its AI expenditure and compete with the likes of Microsoft, Amazon, and other cloud players. Oracle said that it intends to raise $50 billion in debt and equity, though executives said that the firm had no plans to raise debt in 2026.

Recommended reading

• OpenAI Backtracks on “Opportunistic and Sloppy” US Government Deal

• OpenAI Targets 8,000 Staff in Enterprise AI Push

• Will Meta Cut 20% of Its Workforce Over AI?

While executives think AI investments will pay off over time, and Oracle lauds its $533 billion from “remaining performance obligations” – a metric for contracted revenue that has yet to be recognised – investors are getting inpatient.

The firm’s stock price fell 25% this year, far outpacing other major tech corporations in terms of a downward trend.

The layoffs could see and influx of free cash flow as the firm looks to AI to fill in workforce gaps.

As Meta also toys with the idea of mass layoffs in favour of AI, OpenAI is departing from this trend as it looks to hire 8,000 workers to bolster its efforts in the AI enterprise market.