US tech firm Oracle cuts thousands of jobs as it steps up AI spending
<p>Company chaired by Trump ally Larry Ellison seeks to reassure investors that bet on AI infrastructure will pay off</p><p>Oracle is cutting thousands of jobs as the US technology company seeks to reassure investors that its bet on AI infrastructure will pay off.</p><p>The $420bn firm, headquartered in Austin, Texas, started making employees redundant on Tuesday, with thousands of Oracle’s 160,000-strong workforce expected to leave.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/01/us-tech-firm-oracle-cuts-thousands-of-jobs-as-it-steps-up-ai-spending-larry-ellison">Continue reading...</a>
Oracle is cutting thousands of jobs as the US technology company seeks to reassure investors that its bet on AI infrastructure will pay off.
The $420bn firm, headquartered in Austin, Texas, started making employees redundant on Tuesday, with thousands of Oracle’s 160,000-strong workforce expected to leave.
About 10,000 people have lost their jobs so far, the BBC reported, citing an unnamed employee at the company, which is chaired by Larry Ellison, the billionaire ally of Donald Trump. He is worth $189bn (£142bn) and is the world’s sixth richest person, Forbes estimates.
Michael Shepherd, a senior manager at Oracle, who was not affected by the cuts, posted on the social media site LinkedIn that there had been a “significant reduction in force” at the business.
Shepherd said the decision had affected “senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers, and technical specialists with deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, government and sovereign cloud environments, and enterprise-scale systems”.
Business Insider first reported the job cuts, which were announced via an email stating: “After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organisational change.”
Oracle acknowledged some job losses on Tuesday, affecting 491 employees working remotely in Washington state in the US and at its Seattle offices.
The cuts come as Oracle, a business software company, steps up spending on datacentres – key infrastructure for developing and operating AI systems – in an effort to better compete with cloud rivals, such as Alphabet and Amazon.
Oracle’s plans include a $300bn datacentre deal with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, but investors have grown concerned about the billions of dollars of expenditure attached to its plans, which includes raising $50bn in new debt.
In a March filing, Oracle said it expects total costs tied to its 2026 restructuring plan to reach up to $2.1bn, largely owing to redundancies and related expenses.
Meanwhile, more than 70 tech companies have cut about 40,480 jobs so far this year, according to the tech redundancy site Layoffs.fyi, as companies increasingly reallocate resources toward AI, heightening fears of AI-driven disruptions among workers.
Last month, Reuters reported that Meta was planning sweeping job cuts that could affect 20% or more of its workforce.
Oracle has been contacted for comment.
Reuters contributed to this story
The Guardian AI
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/apr/01/us-tech-firm-oracle-cuts-thousands-of-jobs-as-it-steps-up-ai-spending-larry-ellisonSign in to highlight and annotate this article
Conversation starters
Daily AI Digest
Get the top 5 AI stories delivered to your inbox every morning.
More about
company
new AI agent just got API access to our stack and nobody can tell me what it can write to
got pulled into a meeting today. apparently we're adding an Agentic AI to the team. it will learn our environment, handle tasks autonomously, and integrate via API. it does not need onboarding, a desk, or health insurance. Great. i have one question nobody in that meeting could answer. how does it actually work? not philosophically. like what is the system. because from what i can tell it's an LLM with tools strapped to it, some kind of memory layer nobody can fully explain, and a control loop that lets it run without a human saying yes to every step. which means somewhere in my company's stack there is now a process with access to our tools, our data, and apparently a better performance review than me, and i genuinely do not understand the architecture. the memory part especially. is it r
SpaceX Files For IPO With $1tn+ Valuation in Sight
SpaceX has taken a significant step towards a public market debut after confidentially filing for an initial public offering (IPO) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to a report from Bloomberg. The move positions Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company to become one of the most valuable publicly traded firms in the [ ] The post SpaceX Files For IPO With $1tn+ Valuation in Sight appeared first on DIGIT .
Knowledge Map
Connected Articles — Knowledge Graph
This article is connected to other articles through shared AI topics and tags.
More in Products
Ultimate AI Agent for Laravel (2026)
Hey there, Laravel fam! 😎 I know what you're thinking? Ultimate AI Agent for Laravel? Is it real? How? What? Exactly how's it working? Which tool? Please spill the beans. I'm a Laravel developer since years, running my own Laravel agency, Laravel freelancer with a strong team of Laravel wizards. We know everything about the latest Laravel 13 release , Taylor's Laravel AI SDK drop, but still, an AI agent built exclusively for Laravel? What exactly is it? I wanna try it NOW. Heard of Laracopilot? Maybe somewhere, if you hit up Laracon India, Laracon US, or Laracon Europe. Yeah, they had their booth rocking those conferences. But even if not, you gotta know about the AI Agent for Laravel. Spoiler: Laracopilot is THE right tool, the ultimate AI agent for Laravel! As a battle-tested Laravel pr
Discussion
Sign in to join the discussion
No comments yet — be the first to share your thoughts!