Firstpost ·
Economy, business and finance
Oracle layoffs explained: Second round of job cuts—here’s what the CFO says
Oracle has cut jobs again even as its AI and cloud businesses expand rapidly. Here is what is known about the latest layoffs in India, the estimated number of affected employees, CFO Hilary Maxson’s message to staff, and why Oracle is reducing parts of its workforce while dramatically increasing infrastructure spending.
Oracle has begun another round of job cuts in India just as the technology company accelerates spending on artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure. The latest restructuring follows layoffs that started in the US on September 14, but Oracle has not disclosed the number of employees affected by the new exercise.
The situation has raised questions about why a company reporting strong cloud growth is reducing its workforce. The answer lies partly in how Oracle is reallocating resources as it builds capacity for AI customers, while also trying to control costs. Reports of the scale of the latest cuts vary, and estimates circulating about the number of affected workers have not been confirmed by the company.
Employees in India have started receiving termination notices as part of the latest restructuring. Moneycontrol reported that product engineering appears to have taken a larger share of the reductions, while support and consulting teams have seen comparatively fewer cuts. Some senior employees associated with Oracle Financial Services Software have also reportedly been affected outside India.
The exact size of the India exercise remains unclear. Some reports have put the potential impact at around 3,000 employees, while other reporting has suggested that the figure could change as the process progresses. These numbers should therefore be treated as estimates rather than an official tally.
The latest action follows a much larger workforce reduction during Oracle's financial year ended May 31 2026. The company reported that its global headcount fell by about 21,000, or 13 per cent, leaving roughly 141,000 full-time employees.
What did the CFO say?
Oracle CFO Hilary Maxson offered employees a message that was notable for what it did not ask them to do.
At a companywide meeting, Maxson pushed back against the idea that a smaller workforce should automatically mean existing employees taking on substantially more work. According to Business Insider, she said Oracle should not operate on the principle of “doing more with less”.
Instead, her message was centred on choices, including simplify processes that do little for customers, concentrate resources on areas with greater impact and become more selective about how employees' time is used.
Co-chief executive Mike Sicilia made a similar point during the meeting, asking staff to consider how their work affects customers. “How does the work that I’m doing help deliver a better outcome for a customer?” he said, according to reports.
The comments came shortly after the latest layoffs and did not directly address how many employees had lost their jobs.
Why Oracle is cutting jobs again?
The restructuring is taking place alongside a dramatic increase in Oracle's investment in AI infrastructure. In its first quarter of fiscal 2027, Oracle recorded $28.5 billion in capital expenditure, up sharply from $8.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. The company has forecast capital expenditure of $90 billion to $95 billion for the full financial year.
Oracle says the spending reflects demand for AI cloud capacity. It reported more than $30 billion in additional AI cloud contracts during the quarter, while remaining performance obligations reached $664 billion. Cloud infrastructure revenue rose 121% year on year to $7.4 billion, and total revenue increased 30% to $19.3 billion.
Those figures help explain the unusual backdrop to the layoffs: Oracle is simultaneously expanding aggressively in infrastructure while reducing parts of its workforce.
The company has not said that AI investment alone is responsible for the job cuts. The available reporting instead points to a combination of organisational restructuring, cost control and a shift in resources towards its cloud and AI priorities.