Oracle cuts thousands of jobs amid heavy AI spending

Tech giant Oracle has made “significant” job cuts affecting thousands of employees, according to staff posts online, as the company ramps up investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

A senior manager, Michael Shepherd, who was not affected, wrote on LinkedIn that “senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers, and technical specialists” had been let go, Caliber.Az reports per British media.

Around 10,000 employees are believed to have lost their jobs, one worker said, citing a decline in active users on the company’s internal Slack system. Oracle declined to comment.

Shepherd said the layoffs were not linked to individual performance. “The individuals affected were not let go because of anything they did or didn't do,” he added.

Posts from other employees described early-morning notifications informing them their roles had been eliminated, with severance packages of about one month’s pay.

The cuts come as Oracle accelerates spending on AI, investing in infrastructure and partnerships, including with OpenAI. The company plans to spend at least $50 billion this year and has raised an additional $50 billion in debt to meet demand.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest individuals, remains chairman and chief technology officer.

The company is also part of the Stargate initiative alongside OpenAI, SoftBank and MGX, an AI investment fund backed by U.S. President Donald Trump. The project aims to invest up to $500 billion in expanding U.S. data centre capacity.

“Investing in AI infrastructure is capital-intensive, but our operating model is optimized to ensure profitability,” said Clayton Magouyrk, Oracle’s co-chief executive, earlier this month.

“It’s unprecedented to scale a capital-intensive business so quickly.”

Layoffs across the tech sector have continued in recent years, with executives such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey citing efficiency gains from AI tools, though previous job cuts were not directly attributed to artificial intelligence.

By Aghakazim Guliyev