Oracle begins massive layoffs to fund AI data center push

Oracle began laying off employees Tuesday in what analysts believe could become one of the largest workforce reductions in the company’s history, cuts that appear tied to the skyrocketing cost of building artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Workers in the United States, India, Canada, Mexico and other countries reported receiving termination emails from “Oracle Leadership” as early as 6 a.m. EST, with no advance warning from human resources or direct managers. The email informed employees that their roles had been eliminated “as part of a broader organizational change” and that the day they received it was their last day on the job. Access to company systems was cut almost immediately.

“There was no prior intimation, no call from HR, no manager loop-in. Just an email,” the Times of India reported, citing posts from affected employees on Reddit and the workplace forum Blind.

Oracle has not confirmed the total scope of the cuts. But investment bank TD Cowen estimates the layoffs could affect between 20,000 and 30,000 workers, roughly 18% of the company’s approximately 162,000 employees worldwide. Oracle employed around 162,000 full-time workers as of May 2025, according to its most recent annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Among the units hit hardest, according to employee posts, were teams in Oracle’s Revenue and Health Sciences division and its SaaS and Virtual Operations Services group, each reportedly seeing workforce cuts of at least 30%. NetSuite’s India Development Centre was also affected, with reductions across project management and engineering roles at multiple levels. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment.

The termination email offered severance pay contingent on signing separation paperwork, according to employees who shared screenshots of the message.

Paying for AI

The layoffs come as Oracle pursues an aggressive, and expensive, push into artificial intelligence. The company has committed to building out massive data centers — the large facilities that power AI systems — and the price tag is staggering. According to TD Cowen, the job cuts are expected to free up $8 billion to $10 billion in cash flow to help fund that buildout.

Oracle has taken on $58 billion in new debt in just the past two months and raised $50 billion through a bond offering in February alone. Earlier this year, Bloomberg reported that Oracle was struggling to find financing for Stargate, a $500 billion data center initiative with OpenAI.

Compounding the pressure, Oracle’s stock has lost nearly 30% of its value this year amid a broader sell-off of software stocks, driven by fears that AI will replace traditional business software — the kind Oracle has sold for decades. The stock has dropped more than half its value since reaching a peak in September 2025.

Yet Oracle is not a company in financial distress. It posted a 95% jump in net income last quarter, reaching $6.13 billion. In a March earnings call, Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison sought to reassure investors, saying he believed the threat posed by AI to traditional software would hurt other companies, but not his.

A wider wave of tech cuts

Oracle’s move is the latest in a string of major tech layoffs. Amazon said in January it would cut about 16,000 corporate roles. Microsoft said last year it would eliminate about 15,000 positions. And last week, Meta began laying off hundreds of employees, continuing a pattern of cuts that has eliminated thousands of roles there in recent years.