Oracle's 6 AM Email: 'Today Is Your Last Working Day' as AI Spending Surges

For a number of Oracle employees, the working day began with an email that arrived around 6 am. Its message was short: "We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position... Today is your last working day."

The communication, reported by Business Insider and circulated in posts on social media, told employees that their roles were being eliminated as part of a "broader organisational change". It offered no individual explanation for why a particular employee had been selected for redundancy. Recipients were informed that access to Oracle's computers, email, voicemail and files would soon be deactivated, and were asked to share a personal email address so that severance details and other separation documents could reach them.

It is the abruptness of the process that has drawn attention: for those affected, there was very little time between reading the message and losing access to company systems. The authenticity of the email has not been independently verified by this publication.

Oracle has not disclosed how many employees were affected in this round of cuts.

Heavy spending on AI, tighter cost control

The layoffs come as Oracle spends aggressively to build the data centres and computing infrastructure required for the artificial intelligence boom. The company recorded $28.5 billion in capital expenditure in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, more than three times the $8.5 billion it spent in the same period a year earlier. It has retained its full-year capital expenditure forecast of $90 billion to $95 billion.

Demand for its AI cloud services has been strong in parallel. Oracle said it signed more than $30 billion in additional AI cloud contracts during the quarter.

Building such infrastructure, however, is expensive. Oracle reported negative free cash flow of $5.4 billion for the quarter. The company is therefore managing a difficult balance: spending heavily to capture the AI opportunity while keeping a tighter watch on costs.

A restructuring that predates this round

Oracle's workforce fell by around 21,000 employees, or 13 per cent, during fiscal 2026. Its global headcount stood at roughly 1,41,000 at the end of May, compared with about 1,62,000 a year earlier. The company spent around $1.84 billion on severance payments and other restructuring-related costs during the year.

Oracle has said that the adoption and deployment of AI were among the factors behind the reduction in its workforce. It recently raised its expected restructuring costs by a further $700 million, taking the estimated cost of its fiscal 2026 restructuring programme to about $2.8 billion. The latest layoffs are, therefore, part of a much larger reorganisation rather than a one-off cost-cutting exercise.

Oracle is not alone

What is happening at Oracle reflects a broader shift across the technology industry. More than 6,000 technology jobs were cut in the first ten days of September, with companies including Uber, PayPal, Apple, Zomato and Oracle among those linked to workforce reductions.

Data from Layoffs.fyi showed that 1,28,536 technology employees across 299 companies had been laid off globally by September 10 — already higher than the 1,22,606 layoffs recorded across 278 companies during the whole of 2025.

Goldman Sachs has estimated that 6 per cent to 7 per cent of jobs in the United States could be at risk if AI adoption becomes widespread, with software development, customer service and administrative work among the roles facing greater exposure.

A study by the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, based on ADP payroll data, also found that younger workers in occupations most exposed to AI are increasingly falling behind their peers. Employment among workers aged 22 to 25 in highly AI-exposed occupations was found to be lagging.

For the employees who received Oracle's 6 am email, the consequence was immediate. For the wider technology sector, the episode is one more data point in an unresolved question: how the gains from artificial intelligence will be shared, and who will bear its costs.