American software and cloud computing giant Oracle has laid off thousands of employees as it doubles down on investing in AI infrastructure, multiple reports claimed on Tuesday.
Since early this year, big tech companies have been laying off thousands of employees, with Oracle now joining that growing list. What started as isolated workforce reductions across a few firms is beginning to look more like an industry trend as tech giants invest heavily in AI.
While the company has yet to give exact figures on the impact of the layoff, some employees have taken to different media channels, citing a significant drop in employees across regions, including Mexico and India.
In a LinkedIn post, Michael Shepherd, a senior operations manager at Oracle, tried to clarify the nature of the layoffs, saying that “the individuals affected were not let go because of anything they did or didn’t do. Many of them are the people you call when something is truly broken, the ones who show up early, stay late, and carry institutional knowledge that took years to build.”
Oracle’s layoffs come amid a period of sharply rising investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure, as the company scales up its capacity to compete in the fast-growing market.
Over the past two years, Oracle’s spending in this area has increased significantly, climbing from about $6.9 billion annually to nearly $50 billion. The increase reflects the scale of resources required to build and operate advanced AI systems and the cloud infrastructure that supports them.
Part of that expansion is tied to a reported $156 billion plan to develop AI data centres over the next five years, with a substantial portion linked to demand from partners such as OpenAI. Supporting these facilities is also expected to require the acquisition of millions of specialised chips, with estimates putting the figure at around 3 million units.
“To every tech company, cloud provider, defence contractor, and enterprise organisation reading this — you just got handed a rare opportunity. The talent pool that hit the market today is not average,” Shepherd added.
Damilare Odedina
