Oracle lays off 21,000 people

Oracle has eliminated roughly 21,000 jobs, which is just under 13% of its workforce. In its annual report it even stated outright that deploying artificial intelligence is leading to a reduction in headcount. While people are leaving, investments are going the opposite way — capital expenditures rose 162% to $55.7 billion, mainly due to building AI data centers.

The result is a negative cash flow of $23.7 billion. To finance this, Oracle borrowed $30 billion in February and plans to raise up to another $50 billion, including by issuing new shares.

Oracle's signed but not yet delivered orders jumped to $638 billion from last year's $138 billion. That's more than Oracle's entire market value. The catch is that an estimated more than half of these orders come from a single customer — OpenAI. That's a concentration of risk that, for example, Amazon or Google Cloud may not have to deal with.

Shares have lost more than 28% since the start of the year. The company basically said out loud what other tech firms call restructuring — that AI is directly replacing people.

What is your opinion on Oracle and its current price?