Oracle cut about 21,000 jobs globally in the last year as it reorients its business toward artificial intelligence (AI), according to its latest annual report.

The software and cloud computing company said it had about 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2026, compared to about 162,000 workers at the same time last year.

The “deployment of AI technologies in our operations has resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our employee workforce,” the report says.

The cuts – representing about 13% of Oracle's staff – are part of a broader trend among technology companies, which are spending hundreds of billions of dollars building AI infrastructure such as data centers.

Amazon and Meta, which owns Facebook, have cut thousands of jobs in recent months as they invest in AI.

More than 100,000 tech workers were laid off last year, according to estimates by employment tracking companies.

Oracle made “significant” job cuts in April, according to senior employees who commented online, but the full extent of the layoffs was not revealed until its annual report was filed.

The firm said the cuts have led to about $1.8 billion in severance pay and other restructuring expenses in the past year.

The figure is significantly higher than the $374 million the company spent on restructuring costs in the previous fiscal year.

Oracle said its restructuring efforts “may prove disruptive.”

The company warned that the reorganization could cause a shortage of qualified workers in certain positions, which would lead to a loss of productivity that could affect its profits.

“As our cloud computing and artificial intelligence businesses grow, we will continue to balance our resources and restructure our development teams to ensure we have the right people who can deliver the best cloud and AI products to our customers around the world,” the company told the BBC.

The AI ​​race

Oracle has been in a race to deploy data centers for AI giants like OpenAI and Meta.

The BBC previously reported that Oracle planned to invest at least $50 billion in infrastructure this year.

The company was co-founded by Larry Ellison, one of the richest people in the world, who also serves as Oracle's chief technology officer.

Many companies have reduced their employee workforces, which often represent the largest expense for a technology company, as they invest in AI.

Google, Amazon and Meta together plan to allocate about US$650 billion to this technology this year.

Amazon announced that it plans to invest US$200 billion in AI in the next year, the highest figure among major technology companies.

The e-commerce and technology giant, which employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, also said it would eliminate about 30,000 jobs through several rounds of layoffs.

A senior Amazon executive said in an internal statement in October that the company needed to organize itself “more efficiently and agilely” as AI was “enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before.”