By Alex Halverson
The Seattle Times
(TNS)
Cloud computing giant Oracle has laid off hundreds of Seattle workers since last year, part of sweeping cuts to the company’s workforce. Oracle says artificial intelligence is to blame.
The Austin, Texas-based company disclosed Tuesday in an annual regulatory filing that it cut 21,000 jobs during its 2026 fiscal year, which ended May 31. Between August and March, 741 of those layoffs affected employees in the Seattle area, according to state filings.
Oracle said the increased use of AI and a restructuring plan at the company caused some of the layoffs, according to the annual filing. While Oracle isn’t the only tech company to conduct layoffs and pour billions of dollars into AI development and adoption, the industry has been careful not to say the technology is directly eliminating roles.
Oracle reported almost $1.84 billion in restructuring costs for the year, which includes expenses from severance packages and contract terminations. In the same year, Oracle reported $67.4 billion in revenue.
The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce, Oracle said in the filing.
The company has been quiet around its workforce reductions. As companies like Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have publicized significant cuts to their head counts over the past year, Oracle has eschewed those announcements. But according to Tuesday’s filing, the company’s workforce shrank by 13% last year, from 162,000 full-time employees to 141,000.
Recommended Articles
Oracle’s AI build out has been expensive, mirroring the situation for other tech giants that have culled ranks. And the costs are rising.
As Oracle builds data centers for AI firms, its capital expenditures rose from $21 billion in 2025 to more than $55 billion in its 2026 fiscal year. The company expects another jump to $70 billion in its 2027 fiscal year, which began on June 1.
That spending pales in comparison to the numbers put up by companies like Amazon and Microsoft, which plan to spend a combined $390 billion this year on AI investments.
But Oracle’s build out has put it in a tough spot, as it’s financing AI infrastructure with debt. The company worried investors in February when it announced it planned to raise an additional $50 billion in debt and equity to fuel its AI ambitions, causing it’s already sliding share price to drop further. Oracle’s share price has fallen 15% on the year. At the same time, the New York Stock Exchange Composite index, which includes Oracle, is up 5.5% on the year.
The company’s free cash flow also dropped to a negative $24 billion last fiscal year.
As the tech industry races to compete over AI market share, employees at tech giants have born the brunt of the shifting priorities. Between layoffs at Oracle, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft since May 2025, almost 11,000 tech employees have lost their jobs.
Amazon has maintained that capital expenditure costs didn’t drive their record layoffs between October and January, during which 30,000 employees were let go. The company said their workforce reductions were the result of a desire to streamline the corporate ranks and weed out bureaucracy.
But Microsoft and Meta have said they’re shifting resources around to focus on AI and much of that is cutting costs. Microsoft has also tried other ways to manage its head count, including one-time, unprecedented buyout offers to roughly 8,795 employees.
Though Oracle pointed to AI adoption reducing some roles, the cost of increasing capital expenditures is putting pressure on profit margins and worrying Wall Street. In late April, when multiple tech companies reported earnings, tech stocks mostly slid in after-hours trading as projections for AI investments rose and cloud computing revenue showed lukewarm growth.
Oracle’s stock price closed 5% down on Tuesday.
Photo credit: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure/YouTube
_______
© 2026 The Seattle Times. Visit www.seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency LLC.
Sign in to get access to this free resource, and all of our whitepapers and reports.
Download this content today!
Register Now Already registered? Click here to Log In
