The decision by major US technology company Oracle to lay off 30,000 employees globally – nearly 19% of its total workforce – sent shockwaves throughout the organisation. This has also deepened concerns about the sustainability of software product companies in the age of artificial intelligence and automation.
Employees in sales, HR, engineering, and developers faced the ax after receiving an email from company leadership at 6 a.m. (in all time zones) on Wednesday, citing a “broader organizational change.” The company, which follows a June-May fiscal calendar, ended fiscal year 2025 (FY25) with 162,000 employees worldwide.
Mint has learned that between 12,000 and 15,000 of the layoffs will be in India, which has a total of 30,000 employees, according to at least four people with knowledge of the matter. Employees across the company’s Oracle Health and AI (security) program and Oracle Health Foundations were among those asked to leave, these people said.
The company is expected to pay severance pay equivalent to four weeks of base salary, plus one week for each year of service, according to one of the four people mentioned above. A second round of layoffs is expected next month, another executive said.
Employees contacted by Mint in India described the layoffs as sudden and troubling. While some said their roles were made redundant despite ongoing reskilling, others were retained based on their alignment with the company’s AI priorities.
Oracle declined to comment on Mint’s inquiries about the issue.
Experts said the layoffs signal a broader shift across the software products industry, especially among SaaS (software as a service) companies.
Software companies are shifting spending from employee costs to AI-driven capital expenditures, a trend that is likely to make layoffs more common as companies trim headcount in the pandemic era and move toward leaner operations, said Kashyap Kumbella, founder and CEO of technology consulting firm RPA2AI Research.
“Oracle cut headcount between 2016 and 2021, and is doing so now, as examples like Elon Musk’s X prove that technology companies can survive with a lean workforce,” Compella said.
“More SaaS companies are likely to follow suit, but Oracle acted faster due to its financial requirements,” said Pramod Gopi, founder of Marcellus Investment Managers.
Noting that Oracle’s data center requirements prompted the move, Gubbi said the company’s deal with OpenAI required it to enable data center capacity before servicing the contract, “and the layoffs were a way to cut costs and redirect them to its data center liabilities.”
Last September, OpenAI signed a deal with Oracle to buy $300 billion worth of computing power over five years to build AI models. This deal is expected to begin next year.
“When I received the mail, I thought this was some kind of April Fools’ prank,” said one developer who has worked with the company for five years on condition of anonymity, adding that they only realized it was true when they were unable to log into the company’s systems.
Gubbi said that Oracle “is the only one of the largest SaaS companies with net debt.” Oracle’s net debt in FY25 was $82 billion on the back of an 8% rise in revenue to $57.4 billion, according to Yahoo’s financing data.
