Oracle has started another wave of layoffs, with employees receiving termination emails early Monday morning as the company presses ahead with a sweeping restructuring. The latest cuts come after Oracle's workforce fell by roughly 21,000 employees, or 13%, during fiscal 2026.

Before the latest round, Oracle employed approximately 141,000 people worldwide. The number of employees affected by the new cuts has not been publicly disclosed, but the company has now raised the estimated cost of its fiscal 2026 restructuring plan by $700 million, bringing the total to roughly $2.8 billion.

Earlier reports had estimated that Oracle's broader 2026 restructuring could eventually affect between 20,000 and 30,000 positions, but that figure was not a confirmed tally for the latest round.

Oracle's 6AM Layoff Emails Return

Affected employees received notification emails early in the morning, with the messages signalling immediate job termination rather than a transition period. Severance packages were offered to those let go, though the specific terms varied by role and region. Some teams experienced double-digit percentage cuts, according to an internal document reviewed by Business Insider.

Oracle's layoffs unfolded in the early morning for many employees, with termination emails arriving as early as 6 a.m. The process has drawn criticism from staff and sparked a wave of accounts on social media.

According to posts on a Reddit forum, the process appeared to follow a coordinated, almost clinical timeline. '4am Eastern Time is when federated logins were disabled. If you still have access, you are ok,' one user wrote, describing how Slack access was cut in a rolling wave between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m., followed by termination emails landing 'on the dot' at 6 a.m.

Some employees said they discovered the cuts after waking up. 'I kept waking up in the middle of the night to check but logged in at 6:30am,' one employee wrote, noting a stock grant tied to a promotion was due next month, one that will now never materialise.

The scale of the cuts appears steep in parts of the business. One user described losing half of the team within Oracle's CSS organisation, with the layoffs sweeping up directors and managers alongside frontline staff in North American CSM teams.

One Reddit user who said he worked at an Oracle site in Texas claimed he discovered he'd been laid off when his badge failed at the gate. Locked out of Slack and unable to access his accounts on-site, he had to connect to the network from outside the building just to retrieve his own termination email and forward it to his personal address before losing access for good. The employee said he had started the role on February 2 and had received a "Meets Expectations" performance rating.

For others, the sting was less about logistics and more about what the email represented. '24 years as a QA at Oracle and just an impersonal email,' one long-time employee wrote.

These comments were not independently verified at the time of this writing.

What the Layoff Email Said

We are sharing some difficult news regarding your position.

After careful consideration of Oracle's current business needs, we have made the decision to eliminate your role as part of a broader organisational change. As a result, today is your last working day.

We are grateful for your dedication, hard work, and the impact you have made during your time with us.

After signing your termination paperwork, you will be eligible to receive a severance package subject to the terms and conditions of the severance plan. You will receive an email from DocuSign to your Oracle email address with details on your severance and termination date.

Immediate Action Required

To receive important follow-up information, including FAQs and separation documents to help you through this transition, you must provide a personal email address.

Please click here to submit a personal email address immediately. If you make a submission error, please re-submit a new form. Please Note: The personal email address will only be used for correspondence regarding separation-related information and severance agreements.

Access to your computer, email, voicemail, and files will be deactivated soon, and you will be unable to log into your computer. As a reminder, you are prohibited from downloading, copying or retaining (including emailing yourself any Oracle confidential information.

Thank you for your contributions to our organisation. If you have additional questions, please reach out to the HR team via the Ask HR page...

Oracle Leadership.

The $2.8 Billion Restructuring Plan

Oracle's fiscal 2026 restructuring plan was already expensive before this latest round began. The company disclosed in a regulatory filing that it had added approximately $700 million in restructuring charges on top of what was previously anticipated, bringing the total plan cost to roughly $2.8 billion.

The higher estimate covers additional severance, contract termination and other restructuring costs associated with the expanded plan.

The stated corporate rationale is simple. The restructuring comes as Oracle pours billions into AI and cloud infrastructure while seeking to improve efficiency and manage the costs of that expansion.

In fiscal 2026, Oracle's workforce fell by approximately 21,000 employees, or about 13%, from the previous year.

Oracle has made no equivalent public statement about whether AI systems are absorbing the work of eliminated roles. Oracle has not publicly commented on the latest round of layoffs.

Oracle's story is not a one-company story. Business Standard reported that Oracle, Amazon, Dell, Uber, and PayPal were among the major technology employers driving a global wave of job cuts in 2026. The cuts come amid a broader wave of technology-sector layoffs in 2026, as companies including Oracle, Amazon, Dell, Uber and PayPal restructure their workforces while increasing investment in AI and other technologies.