Oracle Has Begun Another Round Of Layoffs; Fresh Termination Emails Sent To Employees At 6AM In The Morning: All Details

Months after laying off almost 21,000 employees globally and around 12,000 employees in India, Oracle has kicked off another fresh round of job cuts, with several teams reportedly losing double-digit percentages of staff this week even as the company aggressively hires for its AI data-centre buildout.

Affected staff were notified early in the morning via a 6am email just like in April. They were informed that their last working day was effective immediately. Word of the cuts spread on LinkedIn, Reddit, X, and Blind as employees shared their experiences. Oracle has not disclosed the total number of roles affected in this round.

Oracle Layoff Email:

We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position.

After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working… https://t.co/DxuWsIQ20s pic.twitter.com/MAhCjGudpb

— Amanda Goodall (@Amanda_Goodall) September 14, 2026

What the termination email says

Corporate recruiting analyst Amanda Goodall, who tracks hiring and workforce data, said on X that some teams appeared to be facing double-digit percentage cuts. The termination notice sent to affected employees, details of which were shared publicly, informed staff that their role had been eliminated as part of a broader organisational change and that their termination was effective the same day. It instructed employees to submit a personal email address to receive severance paperwork and separation documents, and warned that access to their Oracle computer, email and files would be cut off shortly, with a reminder that retaining or forwarding confidential company information was prohibited. Goodall says, "Based on my data, I would guesstimate about 5000-8000 cuts are being made, and they appear to span professional and technical roles."

Oracle initiated a fresh round of layoffs, sending unexpected, early-morning emails to affected employees informing them that their roles have been eliminated immediately

— Utsav Techie (@utsavtechie) September 15, 2026

Hiring at Oracle continues

At the same time, she pointed to a wave of hiring activity at Oracle over roughly the past 90 days across data-centre construction, power infrastructure, network reliability, senior mechanical engineering, AI and machine learning, AI data-centre delivery, demand planning and data-centre operations.

Goodall noted that the new hires include a technical program manager who joined directly from AWS, a principal finance hire from AWS's EC2 Core Finance division, a data-centre support engineer from Microsoft, a lead mechanical engineer from Microsoft's critical-environment operations, and a senior manufacturing and process engineering hire from Apple. Her assessment was that Oracle is effectively reallocating labour away from its legacy business to build out the infrastructure it needs for its AI ambitions.

A pattern of cuts through the year

Monday's cuts are not Oracle's first this year. The company's global headcount fell by roughly 21,000 employees, about 13 percent, during fiscal 2026, which ended May 31, taking its workforce down to about 141,000 from around 162,000 a year earlier, per its annual filing. Oracle spent close to $1.84 billion on severance and other exit costs tied to that restructuring, up sharply from $374 million the year before.

The company added roughly $700 million to its expected restructuring costs last week, pushing the total estimated cost of its fiscal 2026 restructuring plan to about $2.8 billion, which covers severance, contract termination fees and other exit costs. By August 31, Oracle had already booked about $2.1 billion in charges under the plan — meaning the latest cuts came just days after that disclosure.

Spending big, burning cash

The job losses come as Oracle ramps up capital spending sharply. The company spent $28.5 billion on capital expenditure in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 — more than three times what it spent in the same period a year earlier — while holding its full-year capex forecast at $90 billion to $95 billion. Oracle also said it signed more than $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts during the quarter, pushing its total revenue backlog to $664 billion, even as it posted negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion for the period.

Oracle's first-quarter revenue rose 30 percent year-on-year to $19.3 billion, with cloud infrastructure revenue up 121 percent to $7.4 billion — underscoring the tension between surging AI-driven demand and a workforce still absorbing repeated rounds of cuts.