Oracle forecasts 33% increase in restructuring costs as new round of layoffs hits

Oracle began a new round of layoffs this week, sending early-morning termination emails to staff for the second time in six months. The latest wave began Monday with affected staff being told, “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,” according to BusinessInsider. Termination was immediate. That’s the same wording as in the previous wave of layoffs, which took place on March 31 and affected workers in the US, India, Canada, Mexico and Uruguay. In the 12 months to May 31, Oracle cut its global workforce from about 162,000 to about 141,000, a decline of roughly 13%. Oracle has made no public statement confirming the latest round of job cuts, but in a regulatory filing days earlier the company said it had set aside a further $700 million for restructuring charges, bringing the total charges this year to roughly $2.8 billion. What the new termination emails say Staff receiving the latest termination emails were told termination and compensation details would follow by DocuSign, Business Insider wrote. An internal document reviewed by the publication said severance terms varied by role and region, and some teams facing double-digit percentage cuts. Affected employees took to social media to vent. Eric Brunson, a senior principal offensive security researcher at Oracle, described in a LinkedIn post how he had lost access to corporate communication tools before receiving any formal notice. “I woke up to not being able to log back into Slack,” he wrote. “No new emails or notification in email and I’m locked out of there. I was able to get ahold of my manager on LinkedIn and she confirmed.” Brunson said the timing fell two days before a scheduled RSU vesting date, adding, “Probably part of the plan.” The filing that backs up the layoff accounts While Oracle is not talking about the layoffs, its 10-Q quarterly report states that management approved and supplemented restructuring plans “to implement certain strategic measures and further improve operational efficiencies, including through the adoption and integration of artificial intelligence technologies across certain functions.” It adds that “subsequent to August 31, 2026, our management supplemented the 2026 Restructuring Plan by approximately $700 million to reflect additional actions that we expect to take.” Oracle has already spent $1.97 billion of the $2.1 billion restructuring charges it originally budgeted, it reported. Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst at Greyhound Research, said the filing should be read carefully rather than as confirmation of a headcount. “The supplement is an estimate, not a bill,” he said, noting it raises the program’s estimated cost by about a third without committing Oracle to a timetable. Gogia said the more significant shift is in the filing’s language rather than the dollar figure. Oracle’s August 2025 and February 2026 filings had described the plan as tied to “acquisitions and certain other operational activities.” AI was named as a driver of restructuring for the first time in the Sept. 11 filing. Why the headcount stays unconfirmed Gogia said no verified figure exists yet for how many employees the September round affected. He noted that 30,000 was a January forecast of the total 2026 program. Twenty-one thousand is the confirmed net decline in Oracle’s global workforce across the full fiscal year. A reported 3,000 job cuts in India on Sept. 1 remains unconfirmed by Oracle. The $700 million restructuring supplement “cannot be divided into people,” Gogia said, since it covers termination benefits, contract termination costs and other exit costs across a program spanning multiple countries. “There is no solid headcount for the September round,” he said. A pattern that began in March Oracle’s first 2026 layoff wave began March 31, when the Revenue and Health Sciences unit, the SaaS and Virtual Operations Services group, and NetSuite’s India Development Centre saw some of the deepest reductions. Figures published by Oracle for its fiscal year ending May 31, 2026, show research and development headcount fell from 50,000 to 43,000 employees during the year, sales and marketing fell from 31,000 to 25,000, and services fell from 37,000 to 34,000, according to Gogia’s analysis of the company’s own reporting. International staff, at 92,000, saw a larger reduction than the 49,000-strong U.S. workforce, he said. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment. This article first appeared on CIO.