Thirty thousand jobs have just been cut from Oracle’s rolls, with 12,000 in India. Engineers, analysts, and back-office staff were confronted with a stark reality: they were merely dispensable line items on a balance sheet that needed to be cleaned up.
The company's billionaire promoter, Larry Ellison, is preoccupied with a $111 billion media empire merger involving Skydance Media, Paramount Global, and Warner Bros. Discovery.
Oracle's stock has plunged from $345 in September 2025 to $145 now, and the company has borrowed $100 billion to build AI data centres.
The 12,000-person layoff in India was, in effect, a collective sacrifice to the bond market, artificially inflating Oracle's margins and protecting the stock price.
Industry veterans are sceptical about Oracle's ability to grow in an AI-driven world, and more rounds of layoffs are expected as the company continues to shed its intellectual capital to manage its debt.
