On 31 March, the tech giant Oracle staff received a letter of dismissal from the “Oracle leadership” without prior notice. The analysts believe this would be the largest reduction in Oracle’s history.
Staff in the United States, India, Canada, Mexico and other countries received termination mail around 6 a.m. local time, without any warning from human resources departments or direct supervisors. The e-mail informed staff that their positions had been abolished as part of a broader organizational change and that access to the corporate system would be withdrawn on the last working day of the mail. Oracle has not yet confirmed the total number of employees affected, but the Investment Bank, TD Cowen, estimates that the number of layoffs will range between 20,000 and 30,000, or about 18 per cent of the 162,000 employees globally. Bloomberg first reported this reduction on 5 March 2026, citing sources that the company is planning to cut “thousands” in a number of sectors, some of which are targeted for positions that the company is expected to replace by AI. At the beginning of the morning of 31 March, the employee ‘ s post on the R/employees OfOracle Forum and Professional Forum Blind began to confirm the redundancies in real time. There are reports that at least 30 per cent of the workforce has been downsized by multiple teams, including the collection and health science component and SaaS and the Virtual Operating Services. Canada, Mexico and Uruguay were affected before the United States.
The financial logic behind this reduction is not difficult to understand. According to TD Cowen, Oracle has committed to radical AI infrastructure, requiring an estimated $156 billion in capital expenditure. To this end, Oracle raised $45-50 billion in debt and equity financing for cloud infrastructure in 2026 alone. It has been reported that several United States banks have raised the cost of their loans or stopped financing certain Oracle data centre projects. TD Cowen estimated that this reduction would release a cash flow of $8-10 billion. Oracle disclosed a $2.1 billion reorganization plan in a paper submitted in March 2026, of which $982 million had been recorded nine months before 2026. It is expected that some $1.1 billion will remain in the budget, mainly to cover demobilization costs. Oracle ‘ s net profit surged by 95 per cent in the previous quarter to $6.13 billion, with its remaining performance contract obligations amounting to $523.0 billion, an increase of 433 per cent over the same period. This is not a company that is in a difficult position to collect; it is a company that is making capital-intensive stakes on the AI infrastructure, which its current debt statement cannot easily sustain, and is filling the funding gap by abolishing millions of employees.
