①Oracle notified employees on Tuesday of a new round of layoffs involving thousands of people, while continuing to invest heavily in building data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) development; ②Despite pressures, company executives emphasized that AI investments will yield returns in the long term. Oracle recently disclosed in a regulatory filing that its restructuring costs for the current fiscal year will increase by $5 billion compared to previous expectations, indicating an acceleration of the layoff plan.
Cailian Press, April 1 (Edited by Niu Zhanlin) Oracle notified employees on Tuesday of a new round of layoffs involving thousands of people, while continuing to invest heavily in building data centers for artificial intelligence (AI) development.
It is reported that the rise of generative artificial intelligence is intensifying market concerns about the competitiveness of Oracle's core business; on the other hand, the company’s increasing debt to promote AI investment has led to tightening cash flow, also putting pressure on investors.
As of May 2025, Oracle's total workforce was approximately 162,000. Although Oracle declined to comment on this news, multiple media outlets have confirmed it through internal employees. On social media, several Oracle employees based in the United States and India stated that their positions had been eliminated.
An email received by one employee read: “After carefully evaluating Oracle’s current business needs, we have decided to eliminate your position.” The exact scale of the layoffs remains unclear, but some employees indicated that internal data metrics show that the number of layoffs has reached thousands.
Due to investor concerns over the feasibility of Oracle’s data center financing plan, Oracle’s stock price has fallen by 26% since the beginning of the year, surpassing declines seen among all major technology companies.
Oracle continues to sell its core database products used for storing and managing enterprise information. In recent years, similar to cloud service providers such as Amazon, Oracle has been increasing capital expenditures to build data center infrastructure capable of supporting AI workloads. However, Oracle’s scale in the cloud computing sector remains relatively small in comparison.
To support expansion, the company has relied on debt market financing. In January this year, Oracle announced plans to raise $50 billion in debt and equity funding. However, during last month’s earnings call, executives stated there are no plans for further borrowing in 2026.
In September last year, Oracle disclosed that its 'remaining performance obligations' (a metric measuring contracted but unrecognized revenue) surged by 359% to reach $455 billion, primarily driven by an agreement with OpenAI valued at over $300 billion. Weeks later, Oracle appointed Mike Sicilia and Clay Magouyrk as co-CEOs to succeed Safra Catz.
Analysts at TD Cowen investment bank noted in a January report that Oracle could unlock an additional $8 billion to $10 billion annually if the scale of layoffs reaches 20,000 to 30,000 employees.Free cash flow。
Despite the pressure, company executives emphasized that AI investments will yield returns in the long term.
Magouyrk stated during the earnings call earlier this month: 'Demand for AI infrastructure, whether for GPUs or CPUs, continues to outstrip supply, as directly reflected in our backlog of obligations totaling $553 billion.'
Additionally, Oracle recently disclosed in a regulatory filing that its restructuring costs for the current fiscal year will increase by $500 million compared to previous expectations, indicating that its layoff plans are accelerating.
Editor/Liam