Catenaa, Friday, March 06, 2026- Oracle plans to cut thousands of jobs to manage costs from a massive AI data center expansion.
The job reductions will affect divisions across the company and may be implemented as soon as this month, Bloomberg News reported.
Some of the cuts will be aimed at job categories that the company expects it will need less of due to AI, the report said.
Led by Chairman Larry Ellison, Oracle is embarking on a historic build-out of data centers 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 and Microsoft.
Wall Street projects the expenditures by the cloud unit for data centers 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.
Last month, Oracle said it would raise as much as $50 billion this year through a combination of debt and equity sales.
The reductions being planned are expected to be wider-reaching than the company’s typical rolling job cuts, the report said.
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.
The company had about 162,000 employees globally as of the end of May 2025. Planning for the workforce reductions is still active and could change, the report said.
Oracle’s initial moves as an AI cloud provider drew favor from investors, who boosted the stock 61% in 2024 and 20% last year.
However, as the costs increased, the market has soured on the company, with the shares falling 54% from their September 2025 high through Wednesday’s close.
