President Trump signs order to help complete $14 billion US deal with TikTok
President Donald Trump signed an executive order to help close a $14 billion deal involving TikTok and Oracle as security providers.
Software giant Oracle has cut an unspecified number of jobs as it seeks to cut costs and continue growing its artificial intelligence business, according to former employees and multiple reports.
A number of former employees posted on LinkedIn on Tuesday, March 31st, that Oracle had fired them. It’s unclear how many employees were affected, but CNBC reported, citing people familiar with the move, that the number of layoffs at the company is in the thousands.
Those who posted about their layoffs held jobs in software engineering and cybersecurity. Elsewhere on Reddit, in a group called the Oracle Employees Group, there was discussion last week about job cuts in Canada, India, and the United States.
Oracle declined to comment to USA TODAY. As of March 31, the company had not filed any recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices. This is a legally required warning that employers with 100 or more employees must give 60 calendar days’ advance notice of planned closures or mass layoffs.
Why would Oracle want to fire employees?
Multiple online commenters said employees were notified via email. Fast Company reported that the emails began arriving in employees’ inboxes around 6 a.m. local time.
“After careful consideration of Oracle’s current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of broader organizational changes,” a copy of the email obtained by Business Insider said. “As a result, today is the last day of work,” Morningstar analyst Luke Yang told USA TODAY.The layoffs could account for about 30,000 jobs, or about 18% of Oracle’s total workforce.
Yang said the headcount reductions “should improve Oracle’s operational efficiency and significantly increase revenue per headcount,” comparable to competitors such as Microsoft.
“The main area affected will most likely be software engineering, as AI-based coding tools (Codex, Claude Code) have dramatically increased the efficiency of software engineers,” Yang said. “These layoffs are global. It appears some engineers in India are also affected. We do not believe the layoffs will impact our Oracle Cloud Infrastructure growth plans.”
Oracle was planning to cut thousands of jobs. Bloomberg March 5, Save money, Offset AI data center expansion.
In January, President Donald Trump, along with Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, Open AI CEO Sam Altman, and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, announced the Stargate project to strengthen the United States’ introduction of AI at the White House. Ellison said the project’s first data center is currently under construction in Texas.
Oracle’s cash flow is expected to trend negative over the next few years due to data center spending, which is expected to be recouped in 2023, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.Last month, Oracle announced it would raise up to $50 billion this year through a combination of debt and stock sales.
Contributor: Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, USA TODAY. Reuters. Mike Snyder is USA TODAY’s national trending news reporter. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, and X, and email him at: mike snyder & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com.
