Oracle has set aside $700M more for job cuts it has not made yet

Oracle has raised the cost of its 2026 restructuring by $700M to about $2.8B, covering actions it says it expects to take, and disclosed a plan letting Larry Ellison sell 50 million shares by 24 October. Roughly 92,000 of its 141,000 staff work outside the US, and in the EU collective redundancies require consultation, written notice to the authorities and a 30-day standstill.

Oracle has raised the cost of this year’s job cuts by $700M to about $2.8B, Bloomberg reported , most of it severance. It has already booked around $2.1B of that.

The increase covers “ additional actions that we expect to take “, the company said in a filing. Those cuts have not happened yet. Chief financial officer Hilary Maxson told analysts that “ simplification and efficiency actions ” were helping protect margins.

Most of the people who could be affected are not American. Oracle had about 49,000 staff in the US at the end of May and roughly 92,000 elsewhere, after headcount fell about 13% in a year to 141,000.

In the European Union, actions a company expects to take run on a statutory clock.

The Collective Redundancies Directive covers cuts above set thresholds. It requires an employer planning them to consult workers’ representatives in good time and with a view to reaching an agreement, on how to avoid the redundancies or reduce the number affected.

It must then notify the competent public authority in writing.

The redundancies take effect no earlier than 30 days after that notification, and member states may extend the period to 60.

Getting it wrong became more expensive last October, when the Court of Justice ruled that a failure to notify makes the dismissals invalid and that the defect cannot be cured afterwards.

Romania shows the shape of it. Oracle employs about 4,000 people there and cut around 500 in June, after roughly 400 in late 2025.

Both rounds came out of a plan set the previous financial year, and a former employee said at the time that more was expected.

The money is going into data centres. Oracle is building capacity for customers including OpenAI, burned about $24B of cash after capital spending last year, and S&P has cut it to BBB- , one notch above junk.

Larry Ellison, who owns about 40% of the stock, adopted a trading plan on 22 June that lets him sell 50 million shares through 24 October.

At the closing price that day those shares were worth $8.75B. The stock has fallen 16% since, and the severance bill is $2.8B.