Oracle is reportedly considering cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs worldwide as it struggles to balance rising costs tied to its aggressive artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure expansion. The potential workforce reduction would represent around 10% of Oracle’s global employee base and mark one of the most significant restructurings in its history, reports CIO. The move is seen as a way to cut costs as Oracle spends tens of billions of dollars expanding data centres for AI workloads. The pressure has intensified even as Oracle has confirmed plans to raise up to $50 billion in fresh capital to fund its infrastructure ambitions.
While the company has not officially confirmed the specific details of any workforce reductions, the potential layoffs, if implemented, are expected to affect employees across regions and functions, particularly in non-core operations and legacy data centre roles.
Notably, the US-based enterprise software and cloud computing giant has entered into long-term contracts with major technology firms, including AI developers and hyperscale clients, requiring the company to rapidly expand data centre capacity across multiple regions. Estimates tied to these commitments suggest Oracle could be facing AI infrastructure investments exceeding $150 billion over several years, largely due to the cost of advanced GPUs, power-hungry servers, cooling systems and network infrastructure.
However, to fund these initiatives, the company is facing significant financing challenges. Traditional US lenders have reportedly become more cautious, either pulling back or demanding significantly higher interest rates on loans. Therefore, to bridge the gap, Oracle is also exploring several cash-generating strategies beyond layoffs. These include selling non-core assets, like its Cerner healthcare software unit, requiring upfront payments from new cloud customers, and testing ‘bring your own chip’ models, which shift some of the hardware costs to customers.
The company’s financials highlight both the opportunity and the pressure behind this strategy. In Q2 of fiscal 2026, Oracle reported total revenue of $16.1 billion, up 14% year over year, and cloud revenue of $8 billion, up 34% year over year. During the same period, cloud infrastructure revenue grew by about 68%. Even for the full fiscal year 2025, the firm generated $57.4 billion in total revenue. But despite such strong revenue growth, profitability has come under pressure due to rising capital expenditure requirements. Oracle has signalled CapEx of up to $50 billion in fiscal 2026, a dramatic increase compared to prior years.
And now, in an effort to offset some of the financial pressure, Oracle has also revealed plans to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion through a mix of debt and equity financing. The company has indicated that around half of the funding will come from equity instruments, including new share issuance and equity-linked securities, while the remainder will be raised through investment-grade bonds. The proceeds are intended primarily to fund data centre expansion for Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, supporting contracted demand from AI developers and large enterprise clients.