Oracle plans more layoffs weeks after spending most of its $2.1 billion restructuring budget, report claims — some teams face double-digit percentage reductions, 21,000 full-time positions already eliminated

Oracle
(Image credit: Getty / Bloomberg)

Oracle plans to cut more jobs this month, with reductions on some teams reaching double-digit percentages, Business Insider has reported, citing people familiar with the plans and an internal document. The company wants payroll lowered before its second fiscal quarter opens on September 1, and managers have been told to compile lists of affected employees. A new round would extend a year of deep cuts at the company, which shed 21,000 full-time positions, or 13% of its workforce, in the fiscal year that ended May 31 while borrowing $43 billion to fund AI data center construction.

Oracle's 10-K, filed June 22, capped the total expected cost of its Fiscal 2026 Oracle Restructuring Plan at $2.1 billion. The company recorded $1.8 billion of that in fiscal 2026, a 391% increase over the $374 million booked a year earlier, leaving roughly $300 million of headroom under the existing plan. Cuts at the scale Business Insider describes would either need to fit inside that remainder or push Oracle into its second new restructuring plan in three years; the filing describes the prior 2024 plan as substantially complete since May 2025.

Headcount stood at approximately 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, with around 49,000 of those in the United States. Oracle attributed part of the fiscal 2026 decline to internal AI adoption and told investors that further reductions would follow as deployment grows, having already eliminated roughly 10,000 positions in a single wave earlier this year.

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Company capex hit $55.7 billion in the fiscal year 2026, up from $21.2 billion the year before, leaving Oracle $23.7 billion short of covering its spending from the cash it generated. The company raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion through stock sales during the year, and it expects to secure approximately $40 billion more through borrowing and equity issuance in fiscal 2027. Interest expense climbed to $4.6 billion from $3.6 billion a year earlier, so the annual growth in Oracle's interest bill alone now exceeds half of what it paid in severance and related restructuring charges all year.

Cloud infrastructure revenue grew 77% in fiscal 2026, and total revenue rose 17%, figures Oracle has previously pointed to when defending the spending. The stock is down more than 20% this year, and shareholders sued the company in January over statements about how much it would need to borrow to meet its $300 billion OpenAI commitment.

Oracle declined to comment and hasn’t confirmed the plans.

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Luke James
Contributor

Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist.  Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory. 

  • alan.campbell99
    Not looking healthy. But then they chose to get into this risky bet to build compute infrastructure for a heavily VC dependent client and taking on massive debt themselves in order to do so. I guess there was some desperation given their traditional business had pretty much plateaued with no other growth ideas in sight. They could very well die.
    Reply
  • SonoraTechnical
    Well that spiraled downwards quickly..
    Reply
  • usertests
    SonoraTechnical said:
    Well that spiraled downwards quickly..
    This is only the beginning.
    Reply
  • Scase15
    alan.campbell99 said:
    Not looking healthy. But then they chose to get into this risky bet to build compute infrastructure for a heavily VC dependent client and taking on massive debt themselves in order to do so. I guess there was some desperation given their traditional business had pretty much plateaued with no other growth ideas in sight. They could very well die.
    And as always, it's the employees that suffer.
    Reply
  • j1mm4
    Scase15 said:
    And as always, it's the employees that suffer.
    No you totally don't understand! These mega corps with departments full of analysts could have never predicted this outcome! Also it's definitely not a sunk-cost fallacy to keep pushing on the restructure despite running out of budget for it!
    Reply
  • John musbach
    Scase15 said:
    And as always, it's the employees that suffer.
    Who really uses Oracle anymore anyways
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    John musbach said:
    Who really uses Oracle anymore anyways
    More than a few it would seem...

    https://www.thomsondata.com/customer-base/oracle.php
    Reply
  • Scase15
    j1mm4 said:
    No you totally don't understand! These mega corps with departments full of analysts could have never predicted this outcome! Also it's definitely not a sunk-cost fallacy to keep pushing on the restructure despite running out of budget for it!
    Damn, thanks for the reality check. My simple pleb brain should never distrust their clearly superior intellect :tearsofjoy:
    Reply