Oracle fired up to 30,000 employees at 6:00 a.m. without any warning

Oracle Corporation, a major American multinational technology company, announced the elimination of major jobs on Tuesday, March 31.

The layoff, which is estimated to affect between 20,000 to 30,000 workers, accounting 18% of Oracle’s 162,000-person global workforce, arrived without any prior warning.

A brief formulaic message circulated around 6:00 a.m. EST with the title “Oracle Leadership.”

Employees in the US, India, and other countries received the same termination emails nearly simultaneously.

The message notified them of the termination of their roles due to organizational changes and that the day of the message was their last working day. Additionally, it also noted that information regarding severance packages would be sent via DocuSign.

For many affected employees, access to internal systems was denied immediately.

The most affected teams were Revenue and Health Sciences, and SaaS and Virtual Operations, in Oracle’s cloud computing business, which reportedly lost at least 30% of the workforce.

The massive layoffs are related to Oracle’s ambitious and debt-fueled push into artificial intelligence infrastructure development.

Oracle has taken on $58 billion in new debt in two months as it rushes to build artificial intelligence data centers. 

The company’s shares have fallen by 30% since September 2025, and some banks are reportedly no longer lending to Oracle on its projects.

The news came amid Oracle reporting a 95% jump in net income, surpassing $6.13 billion last quarter.