Oracle has shed about 21,000 roles globally in the past year, its latest annual report shows, as the US software and cloud computing giant restructures its business around artificial intelligence. The firm reported approximately 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, down from roughly 162,000 a year earlier – a cut of about 13% of its workforce.
The layoffs are part of a wider trend sweeping the tech industry, where companies are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure like data centres. Amazon, which employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, has cut about 30,000 jobs in several rounds and plans to spend $200bn on AI investment over the next year. Facebook-owner Meta has also slashed thousands of roles recently. According to employment tracking firms, more than 100,000 tech workers have been laid off in the past year.
“Oracle cut 21,000 jobs (13% of workforce) in the past year as it restructures around AI, annual report shows.”
Oracle’s annual report explicitly links the cuts to AI: “The deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce.” The company had made “significant” job cuts in April, according to senior employees posting online, but the full scale was not disclosed until the report was filed. The restructuring has cost Oracle about $1.8bn (£1.36bn) in severance payments and other costs – far higher than the $374m bill in the previous financial year.
The company acknowledged that the overhaul “can be disruptive” and warned that a shortage of skilled workers in certain roles could lead to lost productivity, potentially hitting earnings. In a statement to the BBC, Oracle said: “As our cloud and AI businesses grow, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world.”
Oracle, co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison who remains its chief technology officer, has been racing to roll out data centres for AI giants like OpenAI and Meta. The BBC previously reported that Oracle planned to spend at least $50bn on infrastructure this year. The broader push into AI is reshaping the industry: Google, Amazon and Meta collectively plan to pour some $650bn into the technology this year. Many companies have reduced their workforces – often their biggest expense – as they invest in AI. An Amazon senior executive said in an internal note last October that the company needed to be organised “more leanly” because AI was “enabling companies to innovate…”