As many as 30,001 people lost their jobs this week

As many as 30,000 Oracle employees lost their jobs to AI this week. It sounded, at first, like a cruel, early April Fool’s joke. But in reality, tech giant Oracle reportedly emailed workers at 6 a.m. on March 31 to deliver digital pink slips. “We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position,” the email sent to staff, and reviewed by Business Insider, said. “After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organizational change. As a result, today is your last working day.” It’s unclear exactly how many employees lost their jobs, with reports ranging from 10,000 to 30,000. The latter would represent almost 19% of the company’s 162,000 workers. Moneywise reached out to Oracle for clarification about the number of job cuts, and the reasons behind them, but was told that “Oracle declines comment.” The layoffs came after Oracle — which was co-founded by billionaire Larry Ellison, who also serves as its executive chairman — posted a 95% net income increase last quarter, to the tune of just over $6 billion. The company’s stock, however, closed at $147.11 the day of the layoffs — about a 55% fall from its all-time highest closing last September at $326.90. Oracle is, as Bloomberg noted, attempting to manage “a cash crunch from a massive AI data center expansion effort” in its pivot to compete with Amazon and power AI infrastructure for companies like OpenAI — with which it signed a $300 billion agreement last year. It’s also been reported that Oracle’s borrowing costs have doubled as banks back off of financing the data center expansion, while a TD Cowen analysis found that cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could save the company up to $10 billion. Caption from article by Mike Crisolago, Moneywise.com