Oracle has started a new round of layoffs, with some teams facing double-digit percentage reductions in headcount, according to three affected employees and an email sent to Business Insider. The layoffs were scheduled to begin on Monday, one person familiar with the matter said.
The move follows an earlier round of job cuts this year and comes as the company carries heavy debt from its aggressive push into AI infrastructure. Business Insider reported last month that Oracle had drawn up a fresh redundancy plan to trim labor costs while it borrows billions to build data centers for AI workloads.
Internal documents show that the scale of cuts varies by team, with some units seeing reductions of 10 percent or more. Posts on LinkedIn, Reddit and the anonymous workplace forum Blind on Monday included accounts from people who said they had been affected by the layoffs.
Oracle's latest filing shows that its workforce shrank by 21,000 people, or 13 percent, in the fiscal year ending May 31, 2026. The company said it had about 141,000 employees before this round of cuts.
Debt-fueled AI bet
Oracle has accumulated billions of dollars in debt to finance data center construction, betting that demand for AI will keep growing. In its fiscal first quarter, capital expenditure reached $28.5 billion (about 191.4 billion yuan), up from $8.5 billion (about 57.1 billion yuan) a year earlier, according to financial statements. The company maintained its fiscal 2027 capex target of $90 billion to $95 billion (about 604.4 billion to 637.8 billion yuan).
Despite some positive signals in the latest earnings report, including growth in its cloud business, Wall Street remains skeptical that the gamble will pay off. Oracle's net income attributable to shareholders in the fiscal first quarter of 2027 rose 60 percent year-on-year to $4.679 billion.
The layoffs are part of a broader cost-cutting effort as Oracle balances its AI ambitions against investor concerns about debt and returns. The company has not publicly commented on the latest round of cuts.
