American tech giant Oracle has cut some 21,000 jobs since 2025, with the company continuing its massive push into the AI data center space. In its annual 10-K filing with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Oracle said its full-time employee headcount stood at 141,000, down from the 162,000 the company reported in 2025.
Talking about Oracle’s massive spending on the AI front, in 2026, the venture has so far spent USD 55.7 billion on capital expenditures. That’s a 162% increase from the USD 21.2 billion it spent in fiscal 2025. Adjusted revenue for 2026 stood at USD 67.4 billion. The latest spending figures have sent Oracle’s free cash flow plummeting nearly 6,000% to USD 23.7 billion. The company has also reported remaining performance obligations (RPOs) worth USD 638 billion, up from USD 138 billion last year. It has a five-year, USD 300 billion deal to provide data center capacity to OpenAI, one of its largest AI agreements.
Oracle isn’t alone in spending on AI. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft are likely to spend a combined USD 725 billion in 2026 on AI-related expenses, including purchasing chips, building data centers, and developing new AI models.
Meta, like Oracle, has cut roughly 8,000 jobs during its AI build-out, while Microsoft has offered employee buyouts. Amazon has also reduced some 30,000 positions. Despite Oracle spending big at the AI front, investors remain cautious, as the tech company’s stock price has gone down more than 14% over the past 12 months. Amazon stock, on the other hand, is up 11% since 2025, while Google is up 107%. Microsoft and Meta are down by 23% and 17%, respectively.
“During fiscal 2026, our management approved, committed to, initiated, and further supplemented plans to restructure to implement certain strategic measures and further improve operational efficiencies, including through the adoption and integration of AI technologies across certain functions and other operational activities,” Oracle said in its SEC regulatory filing. The company has justified the reduction in headcount as part of its overall “restructuring plan,” which will reportedly cost up to USD 2.1 billion.
“The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company said further in the filing.
Warning that its restructuring plan could result in “increased restructuring costs and reduced productivity,” Oracle continued, “because these types of restructurings may also lead to shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention.”