The headlines about major tech giants announcing massive layoffs due to AI are alarming.
Earlier this month, GitLab let 350 of its workers go in an effort to continue funding its AI infrastructure and get a better handle on the surge of traffic emanating from its AI workflows. And this past May, Meta laid off 8,000 of its employees as it continued to invest heavily in its AI initiatives. When you go on to include the likes of Google, Amazon, Cisco, Cloudflare, and others, you’ll begin to notice a sobering pattern—global and domestic tech companies are cutting tons of jobs as they look to further inject AI into their everyday proceedings.
The latest tech enterprise to join that growing list is Oracle, a multinational business that specializes in building data management systems, enterprise business software and cloud infrastructure for other major corporations.
The number of jobs that have been shed by Oracle is certainly a jaw-dropping statistic for many.
Oracle has cut 13% of its total workforce as it dives further into adopting AI
According to an annual report filed on June 22, 2026, Oracle has eliminated about 21,000 roles globally over the past year as it looks to restructure its day-to-day operations around AI. The company noted that it had approximately 141,000 full-time employees as of May 31, 2026, which is down from about 162,000 workers at the same time in 2025.
In that same filing, Oracle explicitly pointed to AI resulting in those shocking layoffs. “The adoption and deployment of AI technologies across our operations have resulted, and may continue to result, in reductions to our workforce,” the company stated. “These types of restructurings may also lead to shortages of sufficiently skilled employees in certain roles, loss of valuable institutional knowledge, and damage to employee morale and retention.”
Judging by a sobering report released earlier this year by consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the news of Oracle’s AI-related job layoffs isn’t all that surprising. The firm pointed out how AI was responsible for over 50,000 job cuts in the U.S. in 2025. And since 2023, when AI started being tracked as one of the reasons for layoffs by the firm, 71,000+ job cut announcements have been tied to the controversial technology.
Other recognizable tech and finance companies have drastically reduced their headcount as they look to strengthen their AI usage. Dropbox, Block, Salesforce, and Cisco are among the many businesses that join Oracle as the latest firms to further embrace AI while cutting costs by shedding too many of their human roles.
Final thoughts
Waking up to the new depressing announcement of another massive corporation letting a shocking number of workers go due to AI is becoming all too commonplace. And judging by the current U.S. tech and finance business landscape, we should all be prepared to see even more of those headlines as the year rolls on.
More from Tom’s Guide
- Jeff Bezos predicts an optimistic future where AI won't lead to mass unemployment — 'AI is going to create a labor shortage'
- That viral Jeff Bezos quote about AI and water isn't real — here's what actually happened
- Anthropic will pay workers $85,000 to learn AI — and it reveals the next big AI job trend
