US tech firm Oracle cuts thousands of jobs as it steps up AI spending

Oracle is cutting thousands of jobs as the US technology company seeks to reassure investors that its bet on AI infrastructure will pay off.The $420bn firm, headquartered in Austin, Texas, started making employees redundant on Tuesday, with thousands of Oracle’s 160,000-strong workforce expected to leave.About 10,000 people have lost their jobs so far, the BBC reported, citing an unnamed employee at the company, which is chaired by Larry Ellison, the billionaire ally of Donald Trump. He is worth $189bn (£142bn) and is the world’s sixth richest person, Forbes estimates.Michael Shepherd, a senior manager at Oracle, who was not affected by the cuts, posted on the social media site LinkedIn that there had been a “significant reduction in force” at the business.Shepherd said the decision had affected “senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers, and technical specialists with deep expertise in cloud infrastructure, government and sovereign cloud environments, and enterprise-scale systems”.Business Insider first reported the job cuts, which were announced via an email stating: “After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organisational change.”Oracle acknowledged some job losses on Tuesday, affecting 491 employees working remotely in Washington state in the US and at its Seattle offices.The cuts come as Oracle, a business software company, steps up spending on datacentres – key infrastructure for developing and operating AI systems – in an effort to better compete with cloud rivals, such as Alphabet and Amazon.Oracle’s plans include a $300bn datacentre deal with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, but investors have grown concerned about the billions of dollars of expenditure attached to its plans, which includes raising $50bn in new debt.In a March filing, Oracle said it expects total costs tied to its 2026 restructuring plan to reach up to $2.1bn, largely owing to redundancies and related expenses.Meanwhile, more than 70 tech companies have cut about 40,480 jobs so far this year, according to the tech redundancy site Layoffs.fyi, as companies increasingly reallocate resources toward AI, heightening fears of AI-driven disruptions among workers.Last month, Reuters reported that Meta was planning sweeping job cuts that could affect 20% or more of its workforce.Oracle has been contacted for comment.Reuters contributed to this story