Oracle plans thousands of job cuts in face of AI cash crunch

San Francisco – Oracle is planning to axe thousands of jobs, among its moves to handle a cash crunch from a massive AI data centre expansion effort.

The job reductions will affect divisions across the company and may be implemented as soon as March, according to people familiar with the matter.

Some cuts will be aimed at job categories that it expects it will need less of due to artificial intelligence, two of the people said.

Led by chairman Larry Ellison, Oracle is embarking on a build-out of data centres to power AI workloads for customers such as OpenAI. The company, long known for its database software, has been making a transition in the past few years to bulk up its cloud computing unit with a focus on AI, intending to become a viable competitor to market leaders Amazon.com and Microsoft.

Wall Street projects the expenditures by the cloud unit for data centres to push Oracle’s cash flow negative over the coming years before the spending begins to pay off in 2030, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

In February, Oracle said it would raise as much as US$50 billion (S$64 billion) in 2026 through debt and equity sales.

The reductions being planned are expected to be wider-reaching than the company’s typical rolling job cuts, according to the people. This week, Oracle announced internally that it would be reviewing many of the open job listings in its cloud division, effectively slowing down or freezing the hiring process, according to people with knowledge of the move.

The company had about 162,000 employees globally as of end-May 2025. Planning for the workforce reductions is still active and could change, the people said.

The high upfront costs of AI have fuelled cuts across the tech industry as companies work to balance their budgets. Microsoft fired some 15,000 people in 2025 amid rising spending on data centres and AI software development.

Last week, Block announced it would lay off nearly half of its staff, with co-founder Jack Dorsey citing the efficiency-boosting power of AI.

In September 2025, Oracle disclosed in a filing that it was planning its largest restructuring, which will cost as much as US$1.6 billion in the current fiscal year ending in May, including severance cheques to exiting staff. That was significantly larger than any other similar plans Oracle has disclosed. It is scheduled to announce its fiscal third-quarter earnings on March 10.

Oracle’s initial moves as an AI cloud provider drew favour from investors, who boosted the stock 61 per cent in 2024 and 20 per cent in 2025. However, as the costs increased, the market has soured on the company, with the shares falling 54 per cent from their September 2025 high through their close on March 4. BLOOMBERG