Oracle announced a new wave of mass layoffs on March 31, Time reports. Employees were notified by email, while some were informed by phone. As early as January 2026, TD Cowen analysts estimated that cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could free up $8–10 billion. A year earlier, in May 2025, the company employed around 162,000 people. An Oracle spokesperson declined to comment.
Shortly before the layoffs, the company asked employees to document their workflows—apparently to train its own artificial intelligence systems. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison said in March that “the code Oracle writes is not actually written by Oracle, but by our AI models.” Former employees, however, say the AI tools often generated flawed code that had to be rewritten, creating chaos. Some specialists acknowledge that AI also helped speed up certain tasks.
Many of those laid off were long-tenured employees. Time cites the example of a worker who had spent 30 years at Oracle. In a joint survey of former employees and the organisation What We Will, covering 272 respondents, 62% were over 40, and 22% had worked at the company for more than 15 years. The publication notes that the results are not representative of all those affected.
Many respondents believe the cuts disproportionately affected older, higher-paid staff with accumulated compensation in restricted stock units (RSUs). One interviewee told Time they lost about $300,000, another up to $1 million just four months before their shares were set to vest. According to the survey, 27% of respondents had RSU vesting dates within the next 90 days.
Some of those laid off were in the United States on H1-B work visas. They have 60 days to find a new job or leave the country—a deadline Time notes is extremely tight in an industry where job searches can take months.
On April 17, more than 600 employees sent a letter to Oracle management asking for enhanced severance, assistance with H1-B visas, accelerated stock vesting, and extended health insurance—especially for cancer patients and pregnant employees. The company said it would review such requests on a case-by-case basis, but later rejected many of them, often responding with standard replies rather than detailed consideration.