Layoffs at Oracle Corporation continued for a second day in India, with fresh rounds underway at its key subsidiaries, including Oracle India and Oracle Financial Services Software, even as the company moves to aggressively cut costs amid delays and pressures linked to its artificial intelligence push.
People familiar with the matter said the scale of the global layoffs will be higher than 30,000, with India already accounting for around 12,000 impacted employees. Another round of cuts initiated on Wednesday at Oracle Financial Services is expected to push the India tally higher, with the process likely to continue over the coming weeks.
The layoffs are part of a broader restructuring that Oracle is expected to complete by the end of its fiscal year in May. The company is yet to officially comment on the exercise.
India, which houses close to 50,000 Oracle employees across cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, Kolkata, Mumbai and Noida, is the company’s largest workforce base outside the United States. As a result, the impact of the restructuring is disproportionately high in the country and is expected to remain so as the exercise progresses. Similar cuts are likely to follow in other regions, including Asia-Pacific and Australia, although at relatively smaller scales.
Employees said the layoffs are being executed in a staggered but swift manner, with termination emails being sent early in the day, followed by immediate revocation of system access. Several teams across application engineering, cloud, consulting and finance functions have been affected.
The restructuring comes at a time when Oracle’s aggressive bet onAI infrastructure is facing execution challenges. The company has committed significant capital towards building large data centres and scaling cloud capabilities, but delays in closing and executing large AI-linked deals have weighed on investor sentiment. Oracle’s stock on the New York Stock Excange has declined sharply over the past year, even as it reported quarterly revenue of $17.2 billion in its most recent results.
Analysts have indicated that deep workforce cuts are central to Oracle’s effort to generate the cash flows required to fund its AI expansion. Estimates suggest that trimming up to 30,000 jobs could help the company free up billions of dollars needed for infrastructure investments.
Shift to AI-Driven Coding
The company has also signalled a structural shift in its workforce strategy. In recent filings, Oracle said advances in AI-driven coding are enabling it to build software with fewer engineers, prompting a move towards smaller and more productive teams. The company expects restructuring costs, including severance, to rise to as much as $2.1 billion in fiscal 2026.
Funding the AI Pivot
The AI pivot, however, has not been without setbacks. Oracle’s participation in the $500 billion Stargate initiative, alongside OpenAI and SoftBank Group, has seen delays linked to financing constraints. Reports of stalled data centre projects in the US have added to concerns around execution, even as the company has denied any rollback.
Industry executives said the current round of layoffs reflects a correction following aggressive hiring during the post-pandemic period, when Oracle’s workforce expanded sharply. The latest cuts, which follow smaller layoffs in Mexico and Canada last week, indicate that the restructuring is global in nature but more deeply felt in markets such as India, where a large share of roles are concentrated in engineering and support functions.
Employees affected in India are being placed on garden leave and offered severance packages linked to tenure, typically including a few months of pay. However, uncertainty remains over the final scale of the cuts, with insiders indicating that further rounds cannot be ruled out before the fiscal year closes.