March 5 (Reuters) – Enterprise software company Oracle plans to cut thousands of jobs as it faces a cash crunch from efforts to expand its AI data center, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday.
Long a small competitor in the cloud market, Oracle emerged as a major player in the computing power rental business last year, in part, thanks to its $300 billion deal with OpenAI.
But investors have been concerned about how it will fund data center expansion to serve OpenAI and other customers, including Elon Musk’s xAI and Meta.
In December, the company said it expected fiscal 2026 expenses to be $15 billion, down from the $35 billion the company had forecast during the year’s first quarter earnings.
Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, that the layoffs will affect the division at Oracle and may take effect as early as this month. Some of the cuts will be aimed at job categories that the company expects will fall due to AI.
The planned cuts will be broader than Oracle’s typical rolling job cuts, according to Bloomberg.
This week, Oracle announced internally that it will review several open job listings in its cloud division, effectively slowing or freezing the hiring process, the report added.
Oracle declined to comment when contacted by Reuters.
According to an annual filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the company had about 162,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2025.
The software company, led by billionaire Larry Ellison, unveiled plans in February to raise $45 billion to $50 billion to expand its cloud infrastructure, adding to investor concerns about its growing debt load.
Oracle will report third-quarter results on Tuesday. Its shares fell more than 15% last year, with December results showing a cash burn of about $10 billion in the first half of the fiscal year.
(Reporting by Joby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Alan Barona)
