Oracle is cutting thousands of employees worldwide as part of a fiscal 2026 restructuring plan the company expects to cost up to $2.1 billion, driven primarily by severance expenses, according to a March regulatory filing. A WARN Act notice filed in Washington state confirmed 491 redundancies at the company’s Seattle offices effective 1 June, with broader cuts reported by CNBC citing two people familiar with the matter.
The reductions come as Oracle accelerates investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure to close ground on cloud rivals Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The strategic reorientation, trading headcount for compute capacity, follows a pattern now visible across the sector. More than 70 technology companies have cut approximately 40,480 positions globally so far in 2026, according to Layoffs.fyi, as enterprise technology firms increasingly reallocate capital toward AI workloads.
For the MEA region, the restructure carries specific relevance. Oracle holds cloud infrastructure commitments across the Gulf, including dedicated cloud regions in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, both tied to sovereign data requirements and national digital transformation mandates. Any contraction in Oracle’s global workforce that touches its cloud delivery and professional services divisions could affect the pace at which those regional deployments are staffed and supported.
Oracle had approximately 162,000 full-time employees globally as of May 2025. The company declined to comment on the scale of the cuts beyond its regulatory filing. Its shares rose more than five per cent on Tuesday despite remaining around 29 per cent below their year-to-date high, suggesting investors view the restructuring as a credible signal of margin discipline rather than distress.
The layoffs follow a similar move by Meta, which cut several hundred positions last week across multiple teams.