alt Hacker News> The main teams hit - RHS, SVOS, and NetSuite India - are associated with Cerner and NetSuite, both of which can serve to reduce some fat.
> reduce some fat
Yes, but, well... why do they need to do that at all? I mean, what made them make this decision right now? I think it was mentioned in the article - they're in debt because of their AI data centers projects:
> Oracle has taken on $58 billion in new debt within just two months.
Although...
> All of this is happening even as the company posted a 95% jump in net income — reaching $6.13 billion — last quarter.
Still,
> According to analysis from TD Cowen, the job cuts are expected to free up between $8 billion and $10 billion in cash flow — money the company urgently needs to fund a massive buildout of AI data centers.
And they need a lot of resources to fund that, because:
> Oracle to Invest U.S. $2 Billion in AI and Cloud Infrastructure in Germany (2025) [1]
> Oracle unveils $10B data center expansion plan (plans for 2025) [2]
While they're having some problems now:
> Oracle and OpenAI End Plans to Expand Flagship Data Center (Bloomberg) [3]
It's just a few examples; I'm sure if you will dig deeper you will find more. Some sources suggest that "Oracle plans to invest up to $50 billion in 2026 to expand its AI data center infrastructure", but I'm not sure if it's true and if you can trust them, so I'll leave it there. They're trying to optimize because they're in debt, and still they seem to expand that debt even more.
[1] https://www.oracle.com/news/announcement/oracle-invests-two-...
[2] https://www.channeldive.com/news/oracle-capex-spike-cloud-ai...
[3] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-06/oracle-an...
Replies
> Yes, but, well... why do they need to do that at all
Because the ERP and EHR market is almost entirely dominated by SAP and Epic. Frankly, the Cerner bet was already a bad bet when they took it in the early 2020s as was NetSuite to a certain extent.
No business has an obligation to hire you in perpetuity. Similarly, you have no obligation to remain at a company you don't like.
> Although... >> All of this is happening even as the company posted a 95% jump in net income — reaching $6.13 billion — last quarter.
Which is largely attributed to the growth in spend on Oracle Cloud.
---
I work in this industry and once you remove the AI washing, much of Oracle's current strategy is around building a hyperscaler business that is comparable to GCP and Azure in size. Already over the past 2 years I've seen 2 fortune 500s completely shift off AWS or Azure to Oracle Cloud because of better terms and strategic hires by Oracle Cloud.
Edit: can't reply
> Thanks for explanation
No worries! Infra, Enterprise, Cloud, and Cybersecurity has a very different dynamic from other businesses
> And still they were trying to compete, weren't they
Sure, 5 years ago. But not anymore.
> Why have their cloud services are suddenly started to make more money, roughly speaking
Becuase around 2-3 years ago Oracle Cloud began strategically hiring enterprise sales leadership from Azure, AWS, and GCP with preexisting relationships with F1000 accounts who were getting hit by contract renegotiations from the other 3.
> what exactly pushed them to do it right now
The "SaaSpocalypse" [0].
Basically, non-market leading Enterprise SaaS products cannot justify their current prices and valuation because the choice is to now either buy best-in-breed at a significant discount or build in-house working with a systems integrator for Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini.
If you weren't already a market leader in your specific segment of Enterprise SaaS you are most likely going to see your dealbook reduce significantly over the next 2-4 years as customers shift to dominant market players who are offering significant discounts to stave off a "build with Accenture/WITCH+OpenAI/Anthropic" disruption.
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/01/saas-in-saas-out-heres-wha...
you can get a gauge on Oracle debt by looking at CDS prices ( basically insurance that pays out if Oracle defaults on debt ). The link is from 4 months ago and it feels weird to link to reddit but CDS prices have risen quite a bit which implies loaning Oracle money is feeling riskier than it use to be. I don't know what the prices are now.
https://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/1p6f5ra/what_is_ha...
I wish i could remember exactly but there was some financing bet or debt structuring thing that Oracle did that didn't go according to plan and put them in a bad spot.