Oracle, the cloud computing firm, is laying off thousands of employees. The company said it will lay off 491 workers in Washington state and its Seattle offices, effective June 1, according to a notice filed under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.
Oracle said the job cuts are part of a “reduction in force and other terminations,” adding that its Seattle sites will remain open. As of May 2025, Oracle had about 162,000 full-time employees globally.
Under the WARN Act, an employer must provide 60 days’ notice of a layoff. Oracle had no comment on the report, but several social media users on Reddit, X and anonymous workplace network Blind, shared details of the potential cuts, which have left employees confused and uncertain.
Oracle has been increasing spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure to better compete with cloud rivals such as Alphabet and Amazon, and has laid off employees in recent months, amid a restructuring plan it announced in a March filing that it expects to cost up to USD 2.1 billion in fiscal 2026, including severance and other costs.
Shares in the company jumped more than 5% in afternoon trading but were down roughly 29% so far this year. In addition to Oracle, more than 70 tech companies have laid off nearly 40,480 people this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, as companies move resources toward AI and workers grow concerned about being displaced by AI.
Reuters reported that Meta laid off a few hundred employees across several teams last week, after Reuters reported earlier this month that the company was preparing to make sweeping layoffs that could affect 20% or more of its workforce.
Meanwhile, Oracle and OpenAI have cancelled plans to expand their flagship Abilene Stargate data centre campus. The project is developed by Crusoe on Lancium’s Clean Campus in Texas, and is the first Stargate project to go live since the ‘$500 billion’ joint venture was announced last year. Oracle operates the facilities for OpenAI use.