Oracle has reduced its global workforce by 21,000 employees over the past 12 months. “The adoption of artificial intelligence technologies contributed to the job cuts”, the company said. The company revealed that the workforce reduction was company’s latest annual regulatory filing, which showed a significant decline in employee numbers during the fiscal year ending May 31.
In its filing, Oracle said the implementation of AI technologies across various business operations had resulted in workforce reductions and could continue to do so in the future. The company stated that the deployment of AI tools has affected staffing requirements across parts of its business as it continues to integrate the technology into its operations.
Oracle’s global workforce stood at 141,000 full-time employees at the end of the fiscal year, down from 162,000 a year earlier. The company said the workforce reductions contributed to approximately $1.8 billion in restructuring costs.
The latest figures provide a clearer picture of the scale of job cuts at Oracle, which had reportedly been reducing headcount as part of broader efforts to manage costs while investing heavily in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Oracle has been expanding its AI-related capabilities and building data centre infrastructure to support major customers, including OpenAI.
The investments come amid increasing competition among technology companies seeking to capitalise on growing demand for AI services and computing power.
According to the filing, Oracle employed around 49,000 people in the United States at the end of May, while approximately 92,000 employees were based internationally.
The company’s current workforce is now slightly smaller than it was before Oracle acquired healthcare technology company Cerner in 2022.
The $28 billion acquisition added thousands of employees to Oracle’s payroll, many of whom were based around Cerner’s headquarters in the Kansas City region.
Despite the workforce reduction, Oracle continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure and cloud services as demand for advanced computing resources grows globally.