Oracle apparently starts layoff wave
The move had been expected since early March: Oracle is laying off thousands of employees. High spending on AI appears to be the reason.
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Rumors emerged in early March 2026 that Oracle was planning the layoff of thousands of employees due to the company's restructuring and high costs, such as for AI data centers. The company is apparently implementing these plans as of Tuesday this week.
As Business Insider reports, Oracle started the expected wave of layoffs on Tuesday, March 31, 2026. Employees in various regions and from different business units are affected. According to posts from laid-off employees on LinkedIn, the affected divisions include Oracle Health, Sales, Cloud, Customer Success, and NetSuite. The scope of the global layoffs is currently unclear but is said to be in the thousands. In May 2025, Oracle had 162,000 employees.
The report quotes from the email Oracle sends to affected employees. According to the email, the termination is effective immediately due to major organizational changes. After signing the termination documents, the employee is entitled to severance pay. The former employees are also asked to provide a private email address for further processing. The company also announces in the email that access to computers, email, voicemail, and files will be blocked shortly.
Background: Cost Pressure and Share Prices
After initial share price gains due to Oracle's entry into the cloud business, the company's share prices fell by about half since early September 2025. However, the announcement of the layoffs led to a slight increase again. A negative cash flow is forecast for Oracle on Wall Street until 2030 – only then are the massive investments expected to pay off.
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Contrary to expectations, however, Oracle reported revenue growth in early March. The company exceeded the average expectations of analysts. The cloud infrastructure business grew by 84 percent to 4.9 billion US dollars. Year-on-year, quarterly revenue increased by 22 percent to 17.2 billion dollars. Oracle earned nearly 3.7 billion dollars in the same period last year. The stock jumped by more than eight percent in after-hours trading in an initial reaction.
(dmk)
