Oracle fired up to 30,000 workers via email at 6 a.m. — after a 95% profit surge. Big Tech companies are now cutting almost 1,000 jobs per day for AI

It’s unclear exactly how many employees lost their jobs, with reports ranging from 10,000 (3) to 30,000 (4). The latter would represent almost 19% of the company’s 162,000 workers (5). Moneywise reached out to Oracle for clarification about the number of job cuts, and the reasons behind them, but was told that “Oracle declines comment.”

One of the laid off employees, Nina Lewis, who served as a security alert manager, posted on LinkedIn after receiving the notice, writing, “after 34 (33 of them great) years at Oracle, I join the 30,000 or so laid off today. Quite a shock.” She added that “It seems layoffs follow an algorithm of high level individual contributors and mid-level managers - especially those with outstanding stock options” (6).

The layoffs came after Oracle — which was co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, who also serves as its executive chairman — posted a 95% net income increase last quarter, to the tune of just over $6 billion (7). The company’s stock, however, closed at $147.11 the day of the layoffs (8) — about a 55% fall from its all-time highest closing last September at $326.90.

Oracle is, as Bloomberg noted (9), attempting to manage “a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort” in its pivot to compete with Amazon and power AI infrastructure for companies like OpenAI — with which it signed a $300 billion agreement last year (10). It’s also been reported that Oracle’s borrowing costs have doubled (4) as banks back off of financing the data center expansion, while a TD Cowen analysis found that cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could save the company up to $10 billion (11).

Big Tech’s AI job bust

Workers in many industries have long feared the idea that AI would come for their jobs. In fact, a March Quinnipiac University Poll showed that 30% of all employed Americans worry that AI will render their employment obsolete (12).

And their fears aren’t unfounded. A 2025 MIT study found that 11.7% of the labor market — including “finance, healthcare, and professional services” — could be replaced by AI (13).

In Big Tech, however, those fears are being realized at a rapid pace and are often linked to AI expansion. Tracker websites like Layoffs.fyi and Trueup put Big Tech job cuts so far this year at anywhere between 41,000 and 85,000 — the latter amounting to nearly 1,000 layoffs a day.

Oracle’s cuts came shortly after CEO Mike Sicilia praised AI coding tools “enabling smaller engineering teams to deliver more complete solutions” (14).

Amazon, meanwhile, laid off 16,000 corporate workers in January — which followed the 14,000 jobs it cut last October (15) — after CEO Andy Jassy admitted in a memo to staff that AI “will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains" (16).

In addition, Dell cut 11,000 jobs as of the end of January, which some attributed to eventual AI modernization (17), while Block Inc. linked its more than 4,000 February cuts to AI (18). Meta’s AI focus is said to be behind its decision to lay off roughly 700 employees in March (19), as Atlassian laid off 1,600 employees that same month, ahead of further AI investments (20).

And last year, Microsoft laid off at least 15,000 employees amidst speculation of a shift toward more AI automation and tools (21).

What to do if you’re laid off

As Oracle employees learned, layoffs can come fast and without warning. If you find yourself laid off unexpectedly, here are four things to do before walking out the door for good.