Tech giant Oracle makes 'significant' job cuts

Tech giant Oracle made "significant" job cuts on Tuesday, according to senior employees posting online, as it makes big investments in artificial intelligence (AI). Michael Shepherd, a senior manager, was not affected by the job cuts but wrote on LinkedIn on Tuesday "senior engineers, architects, operations leaders, program managers, and technical specialists" had been let go. He said the cuts were not performance based. Oracle declined to comment. Oracle has been using AI tools internally and executives have previously said it enables fewer employees to do more work. "The use of AI coding tools inside Oracle is enabling smaller engineering teams to deliver more complete solutions to our customers more quickly," Mike Silicia, Oracle's other co-chief executive, said earlier this month. Silica noted at the time that such AI tools had helped create new ways of generating sales leads and the automatic selling of Oracle services. He said the company recently used AI to build out its new company website. Oracle is one of the largest tech companies in the world and it offers software and cloud computing infrastructure to other companies. Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world, is Oracle's co-founder, chairman, and chief technology officer. Some 10,000 people are believed to have lost their jobs so far, one employee told the BBC on Tuesday, citing a drop in the number of staff active on Oracle's internal messaging system Slack. Shepherd wrote that the "significant reduction in force" was not based on employee performance. "The individuals affected were not let go because of anything they did or didn't do," he added. His was one of dozens of such posts describing the layoffs. Former Oracle employee Kendall Levin said on LinkedIn her role was "eliminated as part of the company's mass reduction in force". She added that she remains "a genuine believer" in where the firm is headed. Several others described receiving early morning emails informing them they were no longer employed and would receive one month of severance pay. Talk inside Oracle of a significant layoff began earlier this year. Claims similar to those of Oracle's executives about companies being able to use AI tools to do more work with fewer employees have come from tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Jack Dorsey of Block. Both executives have also overseen layoffs at their companies already this year. However, such leaders in the tech industry have been conducting mass layoffs every year for the last several years. Previous rounds of cuts have not been blamed on AI. Other tech companies that have cut jobs this year include Amazon, Pinterest and Epic Games. The job cuts at Oracle come as it has invested heavily in AI, spending both on its own infrastructure and on partnerships with other companies like OpenAI. It plans to spend at least $50bn (£37.8bn) on infrastructure this year, and it has also raised $50bn in debt in order to "meet demand" for even more AI infrastructure. Oracle is also part of the Stargate initiative, alongside OpenAI, Softbank and MGX, an AI investment fund backed by US President Donald Trump. Stargate is a $500bn project to build up data center capacity in the US, which backers say is needed for planned increases in AI processing and power requirements over the next several years. "Investing in AI infrastructure is capital-intensive, but our operating model is optimized to ensure profitability," Clayton Magouyrk, Oracle's co-chief executive, said earlier this month. "It's unprecedented to scale a capital-intensive business so quickly."