Oracle is lowering employees in its cloud division, a transfer geared toward managing prices whereas the corporate continues to pour cash into AI infrastructure.
Sources conversant in the matter stated staff had been instructed this week that their positions had been reduce. Among the layoffs had been tied to efficiency, and hiring continues to be underway in elements of the unit, based on two of the sources.
India seems to be one of many hardest-hit areas, whereas groups within the US are nonetheless studying the extent of the reductions. DatacentreDynamics additionally reported job losses in Canada.
Within the Seattle space – lengthy thought of the hub of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) – greater than 150 jobs have been eradicated, sources stated. The corporate introduced final yr that it will transfer its headquarters to Nashville, and it now lists extra openings within the state of Tennessee than in every other.
The entire variety of job cuts is unclear, however affected groups embody OCI’s Enterprise Engineering group, Fusion ERP, knowledge centre operations technicians, technical undertaking managers on the AI/ML group, and members of the broader OCI AI group.
Whereas the primary wave has targeted on the US and India, staff in different areas have been invited to conferences with unclear functions with managers later this week, elevating issues about additional cuts.
This isn’t the primary spherical of layoffs for OCI. In November, the division let go of a number of hundred staff, and Oracle made deeper company-wide cuts in March, affecting 1000’s.
On the similar time, Oracle is hiring closely to help the enlargement of its AI knowledge centres, that are central to OpenAI’s Stargate undertaking. Earlier this yr, OpenAI agreed to a $30 billion-a-year contract with Oracle. The cloud supplier has additionally secured large-scale contracts with TikTok and Temu.
The corporate’s share value surged 52% this yr, reaching document highs. The momentum has been fuelled partly by its cloud enterprise, which final month signed a cope with OpenAI for about 4.5 gigawatts of knowledge centre energy within the US. However assembly the rising demand for AI providers comes at a steep price. Oracle is anticipated to spend tens of billions of {dollars} constructing large new server farms, and its free money circulate for the fiscal yr ending in Might was detrimental.
Many giant tech companies are making comparable strikes – reducing bills in some areas whereas investing closely in AI. Microsoft has eradicated about 15,000 jobs in 2025, whereas Amazon and Meta have additionally diminished employees.
In a June submitting, Oracle stated it periodically makes workforce adjustments due to shifts in technique, reorganisations, or efficiency points. “The forms of restructurings have resulted, and will sooner or later consequence, in elevated restructuring prices and briefly diminished productiveness whereas staff modify to the restructuring,” the corporate stated.
For now, the combination of layoffs and new hiring underscores the balancing act for Oracle and different tech corporations: scaling up AI infrastructure at document pace whereas controlling the price burden that include main funding in {hardware}.
See additionally: Cloud jobs reduce as AI bites
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