'Today Is Your Last Day': The 6 AM Email That Laid Off Oracle Workers

Oracle's workforce fell by around 21,000 employees, or 13 per cent, during fiscal 2026. Its global headcount stood at roughly 141,000 at May-end.

15 Sep 2026, 05:10 · NDTV

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Oracle sent early morning emails notifying some employees their roles were eliminated today
The company is investing heavily in AI and cloud, spending $28.5 billion in Q1 fiscal 2027 on capex
Oracle cut 21,000 jobs in fiscal 2026 amid restructuring and AI adoption, costing $2.8 billion so far

Which specific departments or roles at Oracle were hit the hardest?

Oracle Layoffs: For some Oracle employees, the workday began with an email they probably never expected to see.

The message was sent early in the morning (around 6 am). "We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position... Today is your last working day."

The latest cuts, according to Business Insider, comes amid Oracle's massive spending spree on artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure.

Also Read | Layoffs Are Rising In Tech, But These Skills Are Helping People Unlock Better Pay

Oracle has not disclosed how many employees have been affected in the latest round.

The termination email told employees that their roles were being eliminated as part of a "broader organisational change". It did not provide an individual explanation for why a particular employee was being let go.

Employees were also told that their access to Oracle's computers, email, voicemail and files would soon be deactivated. They were asked to provide a personal email address to receive information about severance and other separation-related documents.

The sudden nature of the communication has made the latest round particularly striking. For employees, there was little time between receiving the message and losing access to company systems.

Photo Credit: Shared on X By Amanda Goodall

Oracle Is Cutting Jobs While Spending Billions On AI

Oracle is spending heavily to build the data centres and computing infrastructure needed for the AI boom. Oracle spent $28.5 billion on capital expenditure in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, more than three times the $8.5 billion spent in the same period a year earlier.

Oracle has retained its full-year capital expenditure forecast of $90 billion to $95 billion. At the same time, demand for its AI cloud services has been strong. Oracle said it signed more than $30 billion in additional AI cloud contracts during the quarter.

But building this infrastructure is expensive. Oracle reported negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion for the quarter. Therefore, the company is facing a difficult balancing act: spend aggressively to capture the AI opportunity while also keeping a tighter watch on costs.

Oracle Had Already Cut 21,000 Jobs

Oracle's workforce fell by around 21,000 employees, or 13 per cent, during fiscal 2026. Its global headcount stood at roughly 1,41,000 at the end of May, compared with about 1,62,000 a year earlier.

The company also spent around $1.84 billion on severance payments and other costs linked to restructuring during the year. Oracle has said that AI adoption and deployment were among the factors behind the workforce reduction.

Alleged e-mail sent by Oracle to laid-off employees

The company recently increased its expected restructuring costs by another $700 million, taking the estimated cost of its fiscal 2026 restructuring programme to about $2.8 billion.

The fresh layoffs, therefore, are part of a much bigger restructuring rather than a one-off cost-cutting exercise.

Oracle Is Not Alone

What is happening at Oracle is part of a much broader shift across the technology industry. More than 6,000 technology jobs were cut in the first 10 days of September, with companies including Uber, PayPal, Apple, Zomato and Oracle among those linked to workforce reductions.

Layoffs.fyi data showed that 1,28,536 technology employees across 299 companies had been laid off globally by September 10. That is already higher than the 1,22,606 layoffs recorded across 278 companies during the whole of 2025.

Goldman Sachs has estimated that 6 per cent to 7 per cent of US jobs could be at risk if AI adoption becomes widespread. Jobs such as software development, customer service and administrative work are among those facing greater exposure.

A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study based on ADP payroll data also found that younger workers in AI-exposed occupations are increasingly falling behind their peers. The study found that employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed occupations was 19 per cent below the level it would have reached relative to less-exposed workers.

AI May Not Be The Whole Story

Dr Abhinav P Tripathi, Associate Professor at Christ University, Delhi NCR Campus, told NDTV that the current wave of job cuts should not be viewed entirely as AI replacing humans.

"AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind. Around a quarter to a third of this wave represents genuine task replacement through AI and automation. The rest is largely cost reset and workforce restructuring. Some of the job losses will eventually come back, but the workforce structure of 2021 is unlikely to return," he said.

He added that "aggressive cuts by a company may affect quality, risk or client delivery".

Companies may be using AI to automate some work. But they are also using the AI boom as an opportunity to rethink teams, reduce costs and change how work gets distributed.

There is another twist to the story. People whose jobs disappear because companies are reorganising around AI could eventually find that similar roles return.

Gartner predicts that by 2027, around 75 per cent of organisations that focus mainly on turning AI-driven productivity gains into immediate cost savings will be overtaken by companies that reinvest those savings into innovation, modernisation and employee training.

In other words, cutting people may deliver a short-term saving. But companies that use AI to make workers more productive, then invest those gains back into their workforce, could have a longer-term advantage.

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