Larry Ellison-led Oracle has reportedly begun another round of layoffs amid increased capital expenditure on artificial intelligence (AI) and data centres.
Per posts on LinkedIn by impacted employees, the mass layoffs were undertaken on Tuesday in the cloud computing and database management divisions. The move has also affected the company’s India teams. The total number of employees expected to have been impacted remains unclear.
The company had set aside an additional $500 million to meet such global restructuring costs, taking the total restructuring funds to $2.1 billion for the current fiscal year, according to a report by FT earlier this month.
This move comes amid Oracle's ambitions to transition from a traditional database software provider into an AI cloud rival to Amazon and Microsoft. In September last year, OpenAI and Oracle signed a landmark $300 billion, five-year cloud computing deal to power ChatGPT and expand the former's AI infrastructure.
Per a Bloomberg report, Oracle may require $156 billion in capex and around three million GPUs to fulfil its AI infrastructure commitments under this deal, which is part of OpenAI's larger Stargate data centre project. In May last year, it was reported that Oracle would be spending over $40 billion to purchase just 400,000 high-performance GB200 chips from Nvidia.
To fund its AI infrastructure ambitions, the company has reportedly taken almost $58 billion in new debt in a span of two months in 2026.
Between August and September, the company slashed over 3,000 jobs across its United States, Canada, and India teams. Over 100 jobs were impacted in India around that time. Oracle had around 162,000 full-time employees, as of May 31 last year, according to its annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Per a Business Insider report, investor concerns around AI disrupting traditional software businesses have weighed on Oracle’s performance, with its stock down nearly 30% this year.
Oracle is not the only company on a firing spree. Tech giants around the globe, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, have laid off thousands of employees as part of their cost-cutting efforts to compensate for their increasing AI infrastructure investment.
Per posts on LinkedIn by impacted employees, the mass layoffs were undertaken on Tuesday in the cloud computing and database management divisions. The move has also affected the company’s India teams. The total number of employees expected to have been impacted remains unclear.
The company had set aside an additional $500 million to meet such global restructuring costs, taking the total restructuring funds to $2.1 billion for the current fiscal year, according to a report by FT earlier this month.
This move comes amid Oracle's ambitions to transition from a traditional database software provider into an AI cloud rival to Amazon and Microsoft. In September last year, OpenAI and Oracle signed a landmark $300 billion, five-year cloud computing deal to power ChatGPT and expand the former's AI infrastructure.
Per a Bloomberg report, Oracle may require $156 billion in capex and around three million GPUs to fulfil its AI infrastructure commitments under this deal, which is part of OpenAI's larger Stargate data centre project. In May last year, it was reported that Oracle would be spending over $40 billion to purchase just 400,000 high-performance GB200 chips from Nvidia.
To fund its AI infrastructure ambitions, the company has reportedly taken almost $58 billion in new debt in a span of two months in 2026.
Between August and September, the company slashed over 3,000 jobs across its United States, Canada, and India teams. Over 100 jobs were impacted in India around that time. Oracle had around 162,000 full-time employees, as of May 31 last year, according to its annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Per a Business Insider report, investor concerns around AI disrupting traditional software businesses have weighed on Oracle’s performance, with its stock down nearly 30% this year.
Oracle is not the only company on a firing spree. Tech giants around the globe, including Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, have laid off thousands of employees as part of their cost-cutting efforts to compensate for their increasing AI infrastructure investment.
