AUSTIN: Oracle has begun a new round of layoffs, including 491 positions in Washington state, as the software company continues to commit tens of billions of dollars to cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure. A notice filed with Washington labor authorities shows the affected employees are based in Seattle or work remotely, with separations scheduled to take effect on June 1. The workforce action comes as Oracle pushes ahead with a broader restructuring program while expanding data-center capacity to serve rising demand for AI computing.
In a March filing, Oracle said costs tied to its fiscal 2026 restructuring plan could reach as much as $2.1 billion, driven mainly by employee severance, real estate and asset-related charges. The company did not publicly disclose a companywide total for jobs affected in that filing, but the Washington notice provides the clearest current breakdown of specific cuts linked to the latest round. The filing also showed that Oracle expects the restructuring to remain a material expense during the current fiscal year.
Oracle paired that restructuring update with an aggressive spending outlook in its March 10 fiscal third-quarter release. The company kept projected capital expenditures for fiscal 2026 at $50 billion, raised its fiscal 2027 revenue target to $90 billion and said remaining performance obligations climbed to $553 billion. Oracle said much of that backlog increase came from large cloud and AI contracts, underscoring how strongly demand for computing capacity is shaping the company’s current investment cycle.
AI infrastructure spending accelerates
Separately, Oracle said on February 1 that it expected to raise between $45 billion and $50 billion in 2026 through a mix of debt and equity financing. The company said the proceeds would support expansion of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure capacity for customers including AMD, Meta, Nvidia, OpenAI, TikTok and xAI. That financing plan added to a capital-spending program already running at unusual scale for Oracle as demand rises for the data centers and systems required to run AI workloads.
Oracle also said recent advances in AI-assisted software development are changing how some internal teams operate. In its quarterly earnings materials, the company said code-generation tools were allowing it to reorganize product development into smaller groups while producing more software. The statement offered a direct company description of how AI is affecting staffing efficiency inside Oracle, even as Oracle continues to emphasize that its biggest near-term financial commitments are directed toward cloud capacity and related infrastructure.
Backlog expands as cuts proceed
The latest job reductions therefore arrive during a period when Oracle is reporting record contracted business and sharply higher spending commitments at the same time. The company’s $553 billion remaining performance obligations figure, combined with its maintained $50 billion capital-expenditure plan for fiscal 2026, shows Oracle reducing headcount in some areas while still building out infrastructure at speed. Oracle has presented those investments as necessary to meet customer demand for cloud services and AI computing capacity.
With the Washington separations scheduled for June 1 and restructuring charges still expected to run through fiscal 2026, Oracle’s current reshaping now spans both workforce reductions and sizable capital commitments. The combination places the latest layoffs within a broader corporate overhaul defined by cost reductions, financing plans and an expanding queue of cloud and AI contracts. Oracle has not changed its headline spending targets for the year even as the workforce cuts move forward, leaving both programs active at the same time – By Content Syndication Services.