Thousands lost their jobs at Oracle after the tech giant made significant staff reductions earlier this week. While some senior engineers and managers were among those affected, others received early morning news they were no longer employed.

The cuts come amid heavy investment in AI by Oracle, which is spending over $50bn on infrastructure to meet growing demands for AI processing power. However, it's not clear if the layoffs are directly related to this tech push.

Oracle’s co-founder and CEO Clayton Magouyrk stated that their model aims for profitability despite being capital-intensive. Meanwhile, similar mass layoffs have been reported at other tech giants like Amazon, Pinterest, and Epic Games.

The company is part of the Stargate initiative, a $500bn project to expand US data centre capacity. This suggests Oracle sees AI as crucial, but whether it’s the exact driver of these cuts remains uncertain.