AI bet goes awry: Oracle fires 21,000 employees | The Jerusalem Post
www.jpost.com
Oracle laid off ~13% of its staff to fund a $300B computing deal with OpenAI. Now, a credit downgrade and $7B in required power grid guarantees put the massive project in jeopardy.
  • perishthethought@piefed.socialEnglish
    21·
    1 month ago

    To fund the rapid expansion, Oracle took aggressive efficiency measures and enacted a sweeping wave of layoffs. By the end of fiscal year 2026, the company’s workforce was slashed by about 21,000 employees, a decline of roughly 13%, from 162,000 to 141,000 workers. The deep cuts followed an operational restructuring driven in part by the internal adoption of AI technologies.

    If I read this new article right, they’re just talking about the layoffs from ORCL’s March/April 2026, which was their last fiscal year, which ended May 31 2026. I think this is just repeating old news. Anyone else read it that way?

    As a result, Oracle is now required to provide cash collateral or a letter of credit in the astronomical sum of over $7 billion just to connect the building to the power grid, a setup whose ongoing maintenance will cost the company more than $100 million annually.

    That seems to be what this article really has for news and that’s really funny, IMO. Go get 'em, Wisconsin.

    • humanspiral@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      It is burying old news in headline. The consequences/pitfalls of their “strategic shift” are fairly new. The layoffs were explicitly justified for pivot to datacenters that OpenAI will “surely” be able to rent. The new extra problems in that strategic shift just makes them look worse for going all in on the bubble.