Oracle laid off 491 Seattle workers Tuesday, part of broader cuts at the company amid increased artificial intelligence spending and a falling stock price this year.
Business Insider first reported Tuesday that Oracle was laying off thousands of employees as the company faces pressure from Wall Street to cut costs while pumping billions into AI infrastructure like data centers. Though Oracle is not alone in spending unprecedented money on capital expenditures, among the tech giants, it's had the worst-performing stock this year as it takes on debt to finance its AI efforts.
Oracle's stock rose 6% on Tuesday after news of the layoffs, but is down almost 25% on the year.
Oracle did not respond to a request for comment.
The layoffs in Seattle mostly affected employees at two Oracle offices in downtown Seattle, according to a state regulatory filing Tuesday. A few employees were designated as remote.
Those offices, at 1301 Second Ave. and 2025 Fifth Ave., are not closing, Oracle told the state in the regulatory filing.
But Oracle's workforce and physical footprint in the Seattle area are shrinking. Last year, the company had 3,900 employees in the Seattle area, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal. Since then, Oracle has laid off 757 Seattle-area employees, which includes Tuesday's cuts.
Oracle also ditched its downtown Bellevue office in 2024 and, in 2023, shed about 100,000 square feet of office space at the 2025 Fifth Ave. office, also known as the Century Square tower.
The company is the latest to trim its workforce.
Last week, Meta confirmed it was axing hundreds of workers, two months after substantial cuts to its Reality Labs division. Microsoft and Amazon have also collectively laid off thousands of employees over the past year. All of those cuts have had the high costs of AI-related capital expenditures looming over them.
Oracle's layoffs came roughly a week after President Donald Trump named the company's founder and chief technical officer, Larry Ellison, to a technology council that would advise on AI and tech policy, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
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