Oracle Starts New Layoffs and Adds $700 Million to Its Restructuring Plan

Oracle has started another round of layoffs, its second in six months, and a regulatory filing shows the company added about $700 million to its 2026 restructuring plan, lifting estimated charges to roughly $2.8 billion.

The cuts began Monday, according to three affected people and an email seen by Business Insider. “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,” the notice read. “As a result, today is your last working day.” Employees were offered four weeks’ base salary plus one week per year of service, and an internal document said some teams faced double-digit percentage cuts.

The wording matches the notices sent in Oracle’s previous wave on March 31, which hit workers in the U.S., India, Canada, Mexico and Uruguay, CIO reported. Eric Brunson, a senior principal offensive security researcher, wrote on LinkedIn that he lost access before any formal notice arrived. “I woke up to not being able to log back into Slack,” he wrote.

What the filing says

Oracle hasn’t publicly confirmed the cuts. Its 10-Q says management approved restructuring plans to improve efficiency, “including through the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence technologies across certain functions,” and that “subsequent to August 31, 2026, our management supplemented the 2026 Restructuring Plan by approximately $700 million to reflect additional actions that we expect to take.” Oracle had already spent $1.97 billion of the $2.1 billion it originally budgeted.

That AI language is new. Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, told CIO that Oracle’s August 2025 and February 2026 filings tied the plan to “acquisitions and certain other operational activities,” and the Sept. 11 filing is the first to name AI as a driver. He cautioned against reading the $700 million as a headcount. “The supplement is an estimate, not a bill,” he said, adding that it “cannot be divided into people” because it also covers contract terminations and other exit costs. “There is no solid headcount for the September round.”

Gogia said a reported 3,000 cuts in India on Sept. 1 remain unconfirmed by Oracle, and the 30,000 figure that circulated earlier was a January forecast for the whole 2026 program.

Headcount and spending

Oracle’s workforce fell by about 21,000, or 13%, to roughly 141,000 in the fiscal year that ended May 31. According to Gogia’s reading of company figures, research and development dropped from 50,000 to 43,000 people, sales and marketing from 31,000 to 25,000, and services from 37,000 to 34,000.

The cuts come as Oracle borrows heavily to build data centers for AI customers. First-quarter capital expenditures reached $28.5 billion, up from $8.5 billion a year earlier, and the company kept its fiscal 2027 capex forecast at $90 billion to $95 billion, Business Insider reported. Oracle didn’t respond to requests for comment from either outlet.