Oracle Begins a Third Round of Layoffs as Its $2.8 Billion Restructuring Grows

A Six A.M. Email on a Monday

The message landed at 6 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, 14 September 2026, according to the New York Post, which cited Business Insider. It was not the first signal. Some Oracle workers found their federated logins had stopped working at around 4 a.m. Eastern, two hours before the formal notification arrived.

The email opened with a sentence that has become familiar inside the company this year: "We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position." It continued: "After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day."

Recipients were told that access to computers, email, voicemail and files would be deactivated soon, and that they were prohibited from downloading, copying or retaining Oracle confidential information. Severance eligibility remained subject to the terms of Oracle's severance plan, with separation documents and payment details to be sent by DocuSign to corporate addresses. Employees were asked to supply a personal email address for follow-up.

The email did not say how many people were affected. The scale of the latest cuts remains unclear, Calcalist/CTech reported. An Oracle spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

What Oracle Told the Market on Friday

On the Friday before those emails went out, Oracle disclosed in a regulatory filing that it was expanding its planned job cuts by approximately $700 million, bringing the total estimated cost of its 2026 Restructuring Plan to roughly $2.8 billion, according to Quartz, which cited the filing. Calcalist and Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance, carried the same figure.

The additional costs reflect "additional actions that we expect to take," the company said. The plan, approved during fiscal 2026, covers severance payments, contract termination fees and related exit costs, with a portion of the reduction linked to how Oracle is deploying AI across parts of its business.

Through 31 August 2026, Oracle had recorded roughly $2.1 billion in charges against that plan. The expansion was disclosed after the close of the company's fiscal first quarter, which ended 31 August 2026.

The timing matters for how the round was read internally. The filing told the market more cuts were coming. It did not tell employees which roles, teams or countries would absorb them.

Twenty-One Thousand Jobs in One Year

Oracle reported about 141,000 full-time employees as of 31 May 2026, compared with approximately 162,000 a year earlier — a decline of about 21,000, or 13%, Reuters reported on 22 June 2026, citing the annual report. The BBC and the New York Post carried the same figures.

That covers a period which includes the March 2026 round, the deepest cut of the year, and it predates the round that began on Monday.

Oracle spent $1.84 billion on severance payments and other exit costs related to restructuring in fiscal 2026, significantly higher than the $374 million spent in the previous fiscal year, according to Reuters and the New York Post. The company's own filing records restructuring expenses of $1,779 million in fiscal 2026, $299 million in fiscal 2025 and $404 million in fiscal 2024.

As of the end of May 2026, about 49,000 Oracle workers were in the United States and about 92,000 were employed internationally, Bloomberg reported via Yahoo Finance. Roughly two in three Oracle employees sit outside the United States, and the company has not said how Monday's round is distributed between them.

Where the Money Is Actually Going

The filing breaks the restructuring reserve down by segment. Under the fiscal 2026 plan, cloud and software had $659 million accrued against $786 million expected; hardware had $78 million accrued against $83 million; services had $307 million against $399 million; and other categories had $760 million against $835 million. The total stood at $1,804 million accrued against $2,103 million expected.

The cash-flow math is the other half of the picture. Cash used for capital expenditure climbed to $28.5 billion in the quarter ended 31 August 2026, up from $8.5 billion a year earlier, driven by data-center expansion, Quartz reported. Oracle reported negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion for the quarter.

To fund that, the company said it raised $19.9 billion by selling approximately 141 million shares through an at-the-market offering program during the quarter. It has said it plans to raise approximately $40 billion through a combination of debt and equity this fiscal year, and it maintained its full-year spending forecast at $90 billion to $95 billion.

Revenue for the quarter reached $19.3 billion, up from $14.9 billion a year earlier, with cloud revenue accounting for 60% of the total against 48% a year earlier. Oracle also reported a revenue backlog of $664 billion and said it secured more than $30 billion in new AI cloud contracts during the quarter.

Oracle Says AI Is the Reason

The company's own filings state the link plainly. "The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce," Oracle wrote, according to WebProNews quoting the filings and India Today.

On a call with analysts on Thursday, Chief Financial Officer Hilary Maxson cited "simplification and efficiency actions" as helping the company reduce costs and protect margins, Bloomberg reported via Yahoo Finance.

The data centers at the center of that spending power cloud services and AI training for clients including OpenAI. Oracle has taken on tens of billions of dollars in debt to fund the build-out, and capital is moving into AI capacity at a pace that has pushed quarterly capital expenditure to $28.5 billion and free cash flow to negative $5.4 billion. Payroll is moving in the other direction, and the company has told regulators that AI deployment is part of the reason.

The Third Round This Year

It is the company's third round of workforce reductions this year, the New York Post reported. In March 2026, roughly 30,000 Oracle employees were laid off globally, according to The Hindu BusinessLine, Indian Express and India Today. About 12,000 of them were in India — roughly 40% of Oracle's 30,000-strong India workforce, The Hindu BusinessLine reported on 1 April 2026.

The New York Post also reported in April 2026 that Oracle had axed more than 700 workers in what it described as the first wave of a "bloodbath" that could engulf thousands across California.

Those cuts spanned cloud, communications, marketing, engineering, operations and sales, across levels from individual contributors to senior vice presidents, hitting teams including Revenue and Health Sciences, SaaS and Virtual Operations Services, and NetSuite's India Development, according to The Hindu BusinessLine. The March restructuring could free up between $8 billion and $10 billion in cash flow, investment bank TD Cowen estimated, as reported by India Today. TD Cowen puts eventual total reductions at 20,000 to 30,000 workers, approximately 18% of Oracle's workforce, according to Time.news.

The build-up to Monday was visible in August 2026, when Business Insider reported that select teams were bracing for double-digit percentage reductions and that managers had been instructed to submit lists of impacted employees ahead of the quarter that began on 1 September.

What It Looks Like From the Other Side of the Desk

Posts appeared on Monday on LinkedIn, Reddit and Blind from people claiming to be impacted, according to Business Insider Africa and livemint. A Seattle-based former vice president wrote that the company had sent her termination note to a corporate address she could no longer access, describing herself as "One of thousands that got the boot this AM," WebProNews reported.

A director with 29 years of service said he received a heads-up from his boss. The detail is a reminder that the round did not arrive identically for everyone: some learned from a manager, some from a login screen, and some from an email they could only read once their access had already been cut.

Cuts were noted in various departments, including OCI security and NetSuite sales, The Economic Times reported. It is not yet clear whether the latest round affects Oracle's workforce in Israel, Calcalist/CTech reported.

The Ellison Filing

Oracle's filing also disclosed that Executive Chair Larry Ellison adopted a new share trading plan on 22 June 2026 permitting him to sell up to 50 million shares of Oracle stock through 24 October, Bloomberg reported, as carried by Quartz.

Calcalist and Indiatimes reported that Ellison has since cancelled that plan and that no shares were sold under it. Reuters reported he currently has no intention of selling his Oracle stock. One line of the filing describes additional restructuring costs the company still expects to take on. Another describes a share plan for its executive chair. Both were filed after the close of the fiscal first quarter.

The Question Nobody at Oracle Will Answer

There is no total figure for this round. There is no public statement from Oracle on this round. There is no confirmation of its geographic spread. There is no detail on which teams beyond OCI security and NetSuite sales were affected.

Those four gaps are the reporting's limits as of Monday night, and they are not small. The company has told the market it expects to spend roughly $2.8 billion on restructuring under the 2026 plan. It has not told the public how many people that money will move out the door in September, or where they sit.

What is known is traceable to a filing, an email shared with Business Insider, and the accounts of people who posted publicly after losing access. The $700 million expansion was disclosed on Friday. The emails went out on Monday at 6 a.m. The logins stopped working at around 4 a.m. The company has not responded to requests for comment.

What to Watch Next

The next hard data point is Oracle's next quarterly disclosure, which will show whether the restructuring reserve drawn down in the September quarter matches the $2.8 billion total the company has now estimated.

The second is the headcount line in the next annual report. The last one showed full-time employees falling from approximately 162,000 to about 141,000 as of 31 May 2026. That figure does not include Monday's round.

The third is India. The March round removed roughly 12,000 people from a 30,000-strong India workforce, according to The Hindu BusinessLine, and the company has not said whether the current round reaches the same geography.

The fourth is the cash-flow trajectory. Capital expenditure of $28.5 billion in a single quarter, negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion, a $19.9 billion share sale and a stated plan to raise approximately $40 billion in debt and equity this fiscal year describe a company funding a build-out at a scale with no recent precedent in its own accounts. The $90 billion to $95 billion full-year spending forecast is unchanged.

Until Oracle answers the headcount question, the clearest measure of what the AI build-out costs in jobs will remain the difference between two annual report figures — and the emails that arrive before dawn.

By Jessica Ali, Staff Writer

This article was produced with AI-assisted research and editorial support. Sources: Business Insider, The New York Post, Quartz, Calcalist, Bloomberg, Reuters, the BBC, The Hindu BusinessLine, Indian Express, India Today, The Economic Times, livemint and Oracle's regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.