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Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 amid AI adoption

Daniel Nenni

Daniel Nenni

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STORY: Oracle's total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees, in its fiscal 2026.

It's as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business... partly driven by the adoption of AI across its operations. The company had a total workforce of 141,000 as of May 31... down from about 162,000 as of the same period last year. Oracle's annual filing said it spent $1.84 billion in severance payments and other exit costs. It follows multiple reports earlier this year about Oracle cutting thousands of jobs.

The company did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Worries are quickly mounting over job losses due to AI disruption. 196 tech companies laid off more than 119,000 employees so far this year... That's according to a website tracking sector-wide job cuts.

Oracle has in recent months signed massive data-center deals with OpenAI and Meta to compete more forcefully with rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft. However, unlike these tech giants who fund their substantial outlays through large cash flows, Oracle has had to resort to burning cash and issuing debt.

www.marketscreener.com

Oracle workforce shrinks by about 21,000 amid AI adoption

STORY: Oracle's total workforce declined 13%, or about 21,000 employees, in its fiscal 2026. It's as the cloud computing giant continued restructuring its business... ...
www.marketscreener.com www.marketscreener.com
 
Are the layoffs due the ridiculous AI financial outlays or due to AI itself? I have a feeling CEO's can now say AI and lay-off with impunity.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
Are the layoffs due the ridiculous AI financial outlays or due to AI itself? I have a feeling CEO's can now say AI and lay-off with impunity.
Click to expand...
I think most of these layoffs are due to the fact that a lot of tech companies got rather fat over the past five years, employee population-wise, and AI R&D and deployment expenses have forced a employee expense weight reduction diet. Especially for cloud computing companies. I doubt AI is making any significant number of employees obsolete yet. IMO, it's almost certainly too early in the AI learning and deployment curve to risk significant headcount reductions, except perhaps in "communications" and some administrative roles, due to AI tools.

I do believe CEOs are thinking they can do bigger layoffs without worrying the financial communities and investors. Losing weight can look like getting in shape or undergoing cancer treatment. The early AI job replacement myth let's them superficially hide under the former. :)
 
blueone said:
I think most of these layoffs are due to the fact that a lot of tech companies got rather fat over the past five years, employee population-wise, and AI R&D and deployment expenses have forced a employee expense weight reduction diet. Especially for cloud computing companies. I doubt AI is making any significant number of employees obsolete yet. IMO, it's almost certainly too early in the AI learning and deployment curve to risk significant headcount reductions, except perhaps in "communications" and some administrative roles, due to AI tools.

I do believe CEOs are thinking they can do bigger layoffs without worrying the financial communities and investors. Losing weight can look like getting in shape or undergoing cancer treatment. The early AI job replacement myth let's them superficially hide under the former. :)
Click to expand...
This is just an excuse. Its like saying "due to overall economy" as a reason that the company is not responsible for.

Investors generally love layoffs if the financials look good.

that said, A Lot of what oracle does is the target of AI automation. I have heard they are buying AI capacity, reducing headcount, telling managers to use the AI capacity purchased and deal with it. Forcing per employee efficiency (for better or worse).

Side note for the "AI is replacing all humans" crowd. Is total employement going up or down in tech??... track employment (clear, multiple independent sources).... not unemployment (Vague, government adjusted sources)
 
MKWVentures said:
This is just an excuse. Its like saying "due to overall economy" as a reason that the company is not responsible for.

Investors generally love layoffs if the financials look good.
Click to expand...
This aligns with what I think.
MKWVentures said:
that said, A Lot of what oracle does is the target of AI automation. I have heard they are buying AI capacity, reducing headcount, telling managers to use the AI capacity purchased and deal with it. Forcing per employee efficiency (for better or worse).
Click to expand...
What is it you think Oracle does a lot of that is the target of AI automation? A lot of what Oracle does is design and develop high performance system software. AI is not competitive at that. Even for complex enterprise applications software (another big Oracle business group), I'm skeptical AI is as good as skilled humans, but I don't know anyone in development groups like that. So I could be wrong.
MKWVentures said:
Side note for the "AI is replacing all humans" crowd. Is total employement going up or down in tech??... track employment (clear, multiple independent sources).... not unemployment (Vague, government adjusted sources)
Click to expand...
Agreed.
 
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blueone said:
What is it you think Oracle does a lot of that is the target of AI automation? A lot of what Oracle does is design and develop high performance system software. AI is not competitive at that. Even for complex enterprise applications software (another big Oracle business group), I'm skeptical AI is as good as skilled humans, but I don't know anyone in development groups like that. So I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
I am not an expert in software systems. But I was told by someone there that they are using AI to provide and simplify configuration for customers. I assumed for code/script modifications for database analysis.... again you probably know more than me.
 
Daniel Nenni said:
Are the layoffs due the ridiculous AI financial outlays or due to AI itself? I have a feeling CEO's can now say AI and lay-off with impunity.
Click to expand...
IMO, It's just an opportunity to say anything other than "we are laying off to make our operations more cost effective". Oracle has a double incentive here where they have to claim AI savings given that's what's propelled their stock over the last year or two.

I've been "inner circle" enough at some large company layoffs that they always use something external as the propaganda reason for reductions when the real reason is always "we're too fat / we hired too many / we aren't selling like we used to".

That said, Oracle is really large - it should be easy to find efficiency opportunities -- AI or not.
 
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