Oracle sheds 21,000 roles over the past year amid wave of AI layoffs from tech giants

Oracle shed 21,000 jobs, almost 13% of its workforce, in the past year, as tech giants carry out sweeping layoffs as a result of AI.

The company's total workforce stands at 141,000 full-time employees as of May 2026, it said in its annual regulatory filing on Monday. That's down from 162,000 employees at the same time the previous year. This represents an almost 13% cut in its total workforce.

Oracle's stock sank about 1% on Tuesday and is down more than 10%% since the beginning of the year. The move lower came amid a global tech selloff.

"The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," Oracle said in the filing.

The company spent $1.8 billion on restructuring costs, including severance payments and other exit costs, a jump from the $374 million it spent on restructuring the previous year.

Oracle noted that the workforce changes can be "disruptive," including the increased restructuring costs and reduced productivity.

"These types of restructurings may also lead to shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention," it said.

"As our cloud and AI businesses grow, we will continually balance our resources and restructure our development group to help ensure we have the right people delivering the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world," Oracle said in a statement shared with CNBC.

The company told employees in March that it was cutting thousands of jobs as it faced investor pressure over raising huge amounts of debt for its AI infrastructure buildout.

In January, Oracle announced plans to raise $50 billion in debt and equity. Meanwhile, its free cash flow in the last fiscal year came in at negative $23.7 billion, while capital expenditure jumped 162% to $55.7 billion.

Oracle joins several tech giants, including Meta, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, who have announced capex plans this year that could reach $700 billion to fuel their AI data center developments.

Meta laid off 8,000 employees, or 10% of its workforce, in May, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling employees that "success isn't a given" in the age of AI. Meanwhile, Microsoft started offering voluntary buyouts to 7% of U.S. employees in April.

AI was responsible for over 50,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025, with major firms including Salesforce and IBM slashing thousands of roles.