Oracle believed to have cut 10,000 positions across multiple divisions as mass layoffs begin to fuel AI investments — company is reportedly reducing headcount to fund data centers

Oracle has reportedly begun mass layoffs based on reports by various people who worked at the company. According to the BBC, one employee noted that around 10,000 positions have been affected based on the number of active staff accounts in the firm’s Slack messaging system so far. Other people from across the company have also made posts about the situation on social media, like LinkedIn.

“Today, Oracle conducted a significant reduction in force that impacted some of the most talented, dedicated, and high-performing people I’ve had the privilege of working alongside,” Michael Shepherd, a Senior Operations Manager at Oracle, said on LinkedIn. “Let me be direct: this was not a performance action. The individuals affected were not let go because of anything they did or didn’t do. Many of them are the people you call when something is truly broken, the ones who show up early, stay late, and carry institutional knowledge that took years to build.”

The company has not released a comment about its global reduction in force at the time of writing, but there have been reports that it would axe thousands of positions and freeze hiring earlier in March. Rumors say that the cloud infrastructure firm is culling its numbers after investing billions of dollars on hardware and betting big on AI. However, this much spending means that the company is expected to be in the red until 2030.

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It’s rumored that many of the affected employees will be replaced by AI, a disturbing trend after Microsoft’s AI boss said that AI can replace every white-collar job in 18 months. Oracle isn’t the only one that’s been cutting employee numbers in recent months, with Dutch chip equipment maker ASML laying off 1,700 management workers and EA reducing headcount in Battlefield-related studios. Meta has not laid off employees yet, but there have been rumors that the company is reducing employee bonuses for the second time in a row as it spends billions on AI hardware and talent.

This isn’t the only problem that Oracle is currently facing. Earlier this year, some of its bondholders sued the company for misleading statements after it borrowed $38 billion two months after releasing $18 billion of notes and bonds in September 2025. There have also been reports of disagreements between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank regarding who should have the ultimate control of the Stargate project, with the planned 600MW expansion at the Abilene, Texas, campus getting scrapped.

These AI-driven layoffs are sounding disturbing for the average worker, especially as many industry experts and company leaders have been warning about the disruption that AI will bring to the job market. However, OpenAI boss Sam Altman said that companies are just using 'AI washing' as an excuse for these job cuts that they would have otherwise done anyway. But whether this is true or not, it gives little comfort to the affected Oracle employees, especially during these uncertain times.

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