Oracle has reduced its global workforce by roughly 21,000 employees over the last year, attributing the cuts to the efficiencies gained from implementing artificial intelligence across its business operations.
According to the tech giant’s latest annual report, the Austin, Texas-based company saw its total head count shrink by approximately 13 percent, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Oracle reported having 141,000 full-time workers at the end of May, down from 162,000 at the close of the previous fiscal year. The database and cloud-computing firm disclosed that it sustained $1.84 billion in severance and other restructuring costs tied to the workforce reduction, which began in March.
In its regulatory filing, Oracle stated that the deployment of AI technologies has directly resulted in workforce reductions and warned that further adjustments may be necessary.
The restructuring comes as Oracle aggressively shifts capital into its AI data center infrastructure, projecting a net spend of $70 billion this fiscal year, up from $55.7 billion last year. The financial commitment highlights the steep costs tech firms face to remain competitive, though Oracle acknowledged risks if competitors’ AI products achieve higher market acceptance or if the heavy investments fail to yield expected returns.
The strategy mirrors a broader re-engineering across the technology sector, where companies like Meta and Amazon have also eliminated thousands of roles in recent months to free up capital for AI infrastructure.
The banking sector is experiencing a similar structural transformation.
In a May interview with Bloomberg News from Shanghai, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon stated that the financial institution expected to hire more AI specialists and fewer traditional bankers in specific categories. Dimon said that although technology would boost productivity, it would likely reduce overall job numbers in the future.
“There will be all different types of jobs, and I think we will be hiring more AI people and fewer bankers in certain categories, and it will make them more productive,” he said. “I think it will reduce our jobs down the road.”
Rather than relying on large-scale layoffs, Dimon suggested that JPMorgan would manage the shift through its normal 10 percent annual attrition rate, which affects 25,000 to 30,000 employees each year, allowing the bank to retrain or redeploy affected staff. The strategy aligns with global banking trends, including moves by Standard Chartered to eliminate 7,000 roles over four years by substituting lower-value human labor with technology.
The accelerating reliance on automation across tech and finance has fueled mounting concerns among economists regarding widespread labor disruption.
The shift comes during an already volatile economic period. Earlier this spring, Dimon warned that the war in Iran and subsequent shipping blockades in the Strait of Hormuz could trigger significant commodity shocks, stickier inflation and higher interest rates that could further dampen global economic growth and corporate hiring.
