Oracle slashed 21,000 jobs — nearly 13% of its workforce — over the past year

Yes, but that's 161,000 jobs they didn't cut!

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Oracle slashed 21,000 jobs — nearly 13% of its workforce — over the past year

The company spent $1.8 billion on restructuring costs as it cited AI deployment as a driver of workforce reductions

By Cris Tolomia, Quartz Media

Published 22 hours ago

According to its annual regulatory filing, Oracle $ORCL -5.66% ended fiscal year 2026 with roughly 141,000 full-time employees on May 31 — 21,000 fewer than the 162,000 it counted at the same point in 2025, amounting to a headcount decline of nearly 13%.

"The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," the company said in the filing.

Restructuring charges for fiscal 2026 totaled $1.8 billion, a steep climb from the $374 million Oracle incurred in the preceding fiscal year. Under what Oracle has designated the 2026 Restructuring Plan — a program aimed at sharpening operational efficiency through, among other things, AI integration — the company anticipates total charges of as much as $2.1 billion.

The company cautioned that its restructuring efforts carry risks. "These types of restructurings may also lead to shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention," the filing said. Oracle also warned that it may not achieve the expected cost savings within its anticipated timeframe.

Geographically, Oracle's roughly 141,000 employees were split between approximately 49,000 based in the United States and around 92,000 working outside the country as of May 31.

Oracle's workforce reductions are part of a broader pattern among large technology companies. Meta $META -0.29% began notifying roughly 8,000 employees of layoffs last month, citing the need to fund its push into AI, according to prior Quartz coverage of tech-sector layoffs. Artificial intelligence was cited as the top reason for job cuts across all U.S. industries for the third consecutive month in May, with AI-related eliminations reaching 38,579 that month alone.

Oracle's cuts come as the company is spending heavily to expand its AI data center infrastructure. The company's capital spending reached $55.7 billion in fiscal 2026 — up sharply from $21.2 billion the year before — pushing free cash flow into negative territory at $23.7 billion. As Quartz reported following Oracle's fourth-quarter earnings, CFO Hilary Maxson told analysts that net capital expenditures for fiscal 2027 are targeted at approximately $70 billion. Oracle raised $43 billion in debt and $5 billion in equity during fiscal 2026 to fund the buildout.

The company's remaining performance obligations — a measure of contracted but unrecognized revenue — stood at $638 billion as of May 31, up from $138 billion a year earlier, driven by large AI-related cloud contracts.

Over the trailing 12-month period, Oracle shares have lost roughly 15% of their value, Barron's reported.