More than 700 Oracle employees in California learned this week that their jobs are gone. State layoff notices, obtained through a public records request, show the cuts hitting workers in Redwood City and Santa Clara, the Silicon Valley corridor where Oracle built its database empire before moving its headquarters to Austin, Texas, in 2020.
The timing is hard to separate from a broader shift sweeping corporate America. A February 2026 survey by Resume.org of nearly 1,000 U.S. business leaders found that 55% of hiring managers now identify artificial intelligence as the top driver of layoffs this year. One in five companies said they have already stopped hiring entry-level workers altogether, telling pollsters that AI can handle the tasks those roles once performed.
Oracle has not publicly commented on the California cuts or said whether AI played any role. The company did not respond to a request for comment.
What the WARN filings show
The layoffs were disclosed through filings required by California’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act, which compels employers to give at least 60 days’ notice before mass layoffs or plant closures. The documents, pulled from the Employment Development Department’s GovQA portal, list affected sites in the Redwood City and Santa Clara areas but do not break out specific job titles, departments, or reasons for the reductions. The original article does not specify exact filing dates or effective layoff dates beyond noting the notices were filed this week, so those details are not available for inclusion here…