Tax the rich or eat the rich, those are the two options, they have so much wealth they are just blowing it on child exploitation and rape. They have so much money they are buying islands for their sex cult. Enough is enough, a few years ago we were discussing the first company worth 1 trillion dollars, only a short time later, we are on the verge of the first person being worth 1 trillion. No one needs to control that much wealth
Trickle up isn't a thing. Distribution of wealth doesn't happen unless actual people consistently hold the power over time to check the accumulation of wealth. A massive shift (or shifts) in power would have to take place for that to even become possible
There is no trickle up or down. It is simple language for the masses. Don't let the Reagan Admin influence your economic theory, for better or worse. The more accurate translation of "trickle up" is moreso "wealth is siphoned upwards to those with power over the systems that produce profit". But yes, I think we're on the same page fundamentally
This is a bipartisan issue. Trump is a buffoon yes, but the wealth gap widened considerably under Biden's tenure as well and was rising well before it too. Its a feature of crony capitalism and our materialisti & individualistic society. Not solely a republican issue.
Reddit is brain dead in general when it comes to critical thinking but my point in mentioning that is not to blame Biden, but to illustrate that regardless of whose president, the wealth gap grows and the rich get richer. It’s delusional to think otherwise, and to think this isn’t the case shows you have a poor understanding of how our financial systems our set up, and how our economy is set up to require infinite growth in order to be stable. Can’t have an infinitely growing economy without wealth inequality occurring. It’s not right but that’s how our system is built and no sitting president can or will change that fact unless the culture of our country fundamentally changes. And we are so individualistic and materialistic that we easily distract ourselves to make said changes. Trump will be out of office in 3 years, a democrat will presumably take over and absolutely nothing about our situation will change for the reasons I mentioned. But you can still be willfully ignorant of that if you want and point fingers instead acknowledging that the political parties are just two wings on the same bird.
Stop supporting these big corporations. Stop purchasing from Amazon, Walmart, etc. and if you’re a small business, stop doing business with aws, oracle, etc.
It’s not hard to find smaller companies in the cloud services provider space. Same goes for vendors in supply chain.
Which ones aren't funded by the Saudis? I mean the thing here is it's really a self-own, they knocked out the Saudi's money which killed their circular financing.
It just amazes me there are companies for which 30,000 employees is a fraction of their total. Oracle has (had) 162,000 employees. That's insane to me.
To say nothing of companies like Amazon who have 1.56 million employees.
I've never worked for a company that had more than 20,000 employees total. And that company did a ton of stuff, not just related to their core products, but they in-housed a lot of support functionality as well.
Wow. So banks won't lend Oracle any more money? That's a significant milestone.
If banks refuse to lend other tech companies money for AI data centers...well, it doesn't burst the AI bubble, but it DOES stop the bubble from growing further.
OpenAI just recently reduced it's target data center spend from $1.4 trillion to $600 billion which is good since it can't even afford $200 billion. That forecast was always stupid, but it underpinned the entire ecosystem. Now they are cancelling the rest of the build out at Stargate Abilene due to slowing demand growth. Larry made a very big and terrible bet that he put real money and debt into. The stock is down over 50% from it's peak and he's getting sued by bond holders. The energy price shock in LNG is about to pop the bubble completely. Prepare for some wild shit
Fuck I live in Abilene.. feels like our population doubled last few years with this data center and air force base.. both may be temporary, the fallout is getting kinda scary
I mean they provide some jobs as far as building them. (Unfortunately most bring in own teams to build.), but once they’re built they provide very few permanent positions.
Ohio is the exact same way. Despite the fact absolutely no one wants them our politicians keep giving them insane tax breaks, and incentives for 10+ years.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Oracle was on of the companies that was supposed to be making actual money off the AI boom today instead of at some nebulous point in the future. They are the ones at the end of all that capex. They were one of the proverbial shovel salesmen in the gold rush analogy.
I actually think that makes this a bigger harbinger than it seems.
Where did you get that idea, NVidia is the shovel salesman.
The people building, and operating, datacenters are the ones making the least money compared to the highest running investments and debts.
Even the modelmakers could just stop their investments in training and continue their current product, the datacenters can't, they're leasing half their stuff, they have energy bills to pay.
If the bubble bursts it starts with the datacenters, pretty much all risk is stacked there and NVidea is already desperately propping them up.
These companies are screwed the most. They will end up holding all these data centers with maintenance and obsoletion. Nvidia is true winner as they already collected money by then.
I mean if Oracle would just skip its daily Starbucks for a year I'm sure it can save up the money and build the data center without a loan. /s
The article doesn't seem to share that much insight on bank sector thinking - I am particularly curious about what banking sector experts "really think" about the real potential for AI to affect TFP. This is also a constant difference between the thinking of the investment crowd and economists. If you look at TFP with constant national prices during the last sixty years, the internet bubble is smack dab in the middle of a straight line. People underrate the likelihood that AI might do exactly the same thing.
Not only that. Senior management has prioritized the AI data centers above maintaining staff to develop and distribute products and services that have demonstrated value.
Governments who care about their people more than the wealthy need to start planning for the economic fallout. Either AI hits and everyone loses their mid level management class creating an ungodly division in society or AI brings down the economic reserves of the biggest companies in the world causing unpredictable collapse.
Yes. It was the same with the dot com bubble. The Internet was still important but it took a major crash to correct the overvaluation of companies. What rose from the ashes was the strongest companies. Same will happen with AI. When the bubble burst those left standing will be the string companies.
Is this actually news? It is on multiple subreddits this morning as if it’s a new announcement, but the actual post is from Feb 2.
This is the original Jan 30 article from CIO that was being aggregated by livemint on Feb 2: https://www.cio.com/article/4125103/oracle-may-slash-up-to-30000-jobs-to-fund-ai-data-center-expansion-as-us-banks-retreat.html
Heh. If Oracle can’t borrow from banks anymore, that means the Ellisons are going to be in trouble. They have a LOT of financial commitments to data centers, and now they’re going to lean on their “partners” (NVIDIA, OpenAI) to cushion this loss. Except OpenAI is now a government contractor and not a partner, and NVIDIA scaled back their investment in OpenAI already.
There’s going to be a whole bunch of unfulfilled contracts coming up.
…you do know his family has diversified past Oracle, right?
The whole Paramount deal? Owning a Hawaiian island with resorts? He is a bank.
This doesn’t prevent the family from borrowing indefinitely- the banks just want to diversify away from data centers because they’re already highly concentrated in them.
This country is betting on data center/AI tech investments succeeding. If they don’t, the S&P won’t grow as fast.
Yeah, that entity has a pile of debt to climb out of after the acquisition.
If he’s personally guaranteeing ~$44 billion so the deal goes through, he has confidence his other investments would be able to cover that. There are endless financial instruments at this scale- that’s the point.
I don’t understand your argument. Are you saying the Ellisons are going to be insolvent as a result of the Paramount deal?
His other cash-flowing businesses are projecting to cover what he’s personally guaranteed…and they could easily burn a lot more cash if they choose to- but likely wouldn’t, if the strategy is failing.
If Paramount fails, their family’s fortune is still secure. It’s just the son’s big bet with dad’s financial backing.
Hmm. Oracle seems to have faith that its AI data centers for Open AI are important for them, more so than the financial strain the projects are putting on the company.
Oracle has had issues for a while - too much debt. META, Microsoft, google and others are not in trouble and have deep pockets for funding for building data centers. Now getting enough power (vs money) is now THE issue slowing things down.
Yep, Google has issue with the cash flow now. They are investing too much and the return on capital is too low. They are no near close to this situation where Oracle is, but if they keep doing so, they will.
there is a cost to using cash on hand — both the opportunity cost and the cost to repatriate it
financing these things can still happen in other ways, like by issuing corporate paper. But that doesn’t make quite as flamboyant of a headline as “omg Oracle can’t get money from banks AI is dead”
Tbf for Oracle it's just return to norm. They vastly expanded they labor force in 2022 and 2023 from 132K in 2021 to 164K by the end of 2023. In 2025 it was 162K so with 30K lay offs that's return to 2022 level. And that's the problem when talking about the Big Techs lay offs. They might point out not towards structural problems of the sector, but rather be just correction of overconfidence and overemployment it presented in last few years.
It’s way more than 5 years, Oracle had like 120k employees back in 2013, I think that level is about steady state for them. They’re not a growth company they’re a “milk the cash out of the dozens of products you’ve acquired” company.
Yes, of course. But the reason is important. In many sectors,especially in high end services (big tech, consulting etc) there was strong demand growth during pandemic and in first 2-3 years after. Companies started strong recruitment drive hoping that it will repay as market was growing... but it stabilized. And so they were left with overemployment. E.g. numbers I used for Oracle: they increased their staff by 25% in 2 years.
Now many of them just use AI as excuse as they have to strongly reduce their employee numbers to more realistic numbers based on market dynamics that aren't created by stimuli checks+0 interest rates overdrive.
It sure can be if the company hired too many people, has way too much corporate debt, and placed big bets on things that are not working out / taking too long to work out.
Oracle isn’t healthy right now, at least not compared to its peers. It needs to make a change.
But there has been a lack of job creation for many years outside low pay sectors and nursing
So the fact that they supposedly grew but BLS reports were flat for the “information” and “financial” sector = we would have been negative all those years if they hadn’t over hired
What you say is true for 2024+ period. Prior to that profesional services as well as IT were drivers on labor market. And as I said, they got strong increase in demand in 2020-2022 period, which resulted in strong overemployment there.
If you employ people based on e.g. (didn't check data, it's pure example) assumption of 25% market growth in next 5 years, and the market will grow by 15%, you will end up with overemployment despite decent growth.
This is spot on. I think a lot of Reddit is just parroting the recent BLS report right now. They weren’t paying attention during the MASSIVE hiring spree with COVID.
“Many years” is not fair. These same tech companies EXPLODED in size during the COVID era. It was a hiring spree unlike anything tech has seen since 2000.
Just one example: Facebook went from….
2019: 40,000 staff
2021: 80,000 staff
That is both insane hiring and also not sustainable unless some reeeeally big bets pay off.
I'm talking about BLS reports. Finance + "information" + "professional and business services" have basically been flat for at least two years, some closer to three. (I can't give the exact date because BLS site sucks for research past info, but I remember the cliff-fall happening late 2023)
Yeah this is exactly my point — of course IT has been flat for 24 months. ZIRP ended and hiring stagnated. Go back to 2019 and work forward from there.
Heck, go back further — since 2010 the entire IT industry has been on a giant tear of growth.
I mean that's cool and I'm not arguing against that. It's just a common theme in this sub that the world was perfect then Trump ruined everything, so 80% of commenters like and act like everything went to shit in Feb 2025, which is not true. I thought you were one of them since that's the agenda most commenters have
How are they going to "blame AI" for the layoffs if it is because nobody wants to finance building out for AI that nobody wants? Clammy Sammy gonna have to but on his tap shoes and put on a song & dance for new ~~suckers~~ investors.
The “ai made me lay people off” thing is going to pass, and soon. CEOs only get to use that while the AI tide is high. But we’re already racing back to business fundamentals — huge focus on capital efficiency and pure EBITDA.
This could ripple in waves throughout Big Tech. Oracle was powering the data centers to use Nvidia chips to enable AIs for Meta, and others. This could lead to more job losses across the sector as other companies deal with the fallout.
Oracle was supposed to build 13 data centers or so but only completed one or two.
Read a hot take a while back that the other big tech company’s hate Oracle and basically lured them into to blowing their money on AI data centers to try and bankrupt them once and for all, seems legit.
AI is inevitable. It's been developing for generations from IBM’s Deep Blue defeating a world champion chess player to what it is today. The most advanced technology is in military and healthcare, which dominate large portions of the economy and budgets.
Amazon warehouses are approaching 1:1 robots:workers. Google Waymo is doing self-driving cars rolling out to more and more cities. Robotic AI doesn't demo over the internet, but it is growing and it's just as much if not more a part of these AI buildouts as the LLM slop.
Swangthemthings | a month ago
30,000 jobs from a single company. Stagflation. Tariffs. Pointless wars. Corporate greed. Cost of living crisis.
Sure feels like post “the roaring 20s”.
How does society pull out of this tailspin? Could it start on a micro level? Local economic development has also been a point of interest for me.
long5210 | a month ago
trickle up! that’s how. less money for billionaires and more money for the hard working americans who make under 100k.
GipsyDanger45 | a month ago
Tax the rich or eat the rich, those are the two options, they have so much wealth they are just blowing it on child exploitation and rape. They have so much money they are buying islands for their sex cult. Enough is enough, a few years ago we were discussing the first company worth 1 trillion dollars, only a short time later, we are on the verge of the first person being worth 1 trillion. No one needs to control that much wealth
Corona-walrus | a month ago
Trickle up isn't a thing. Distribution of wealth doesn't happen unless actual people consistently hold the power over time to check the accumulation of wealth. A massive shift (or shifts) in power would have to take place for that to even become possible
akaxaka | a month ago
You’re thinking of Trickle Down, which doesn’t work for exactly the reasons you described.
Corona-walrus | a month ago
There is no trickle up or down. It is simple language for the masses. Don't let the Reagan Admin influence your economic theory, for better or worse. The more accurate translation of "trickle up" is moreso "wealth is siphoned upwards to those with power over the systems that produce profit". But yes, I think we're on the same page fundamentally
akaxaka | a month ago
You’re still slightly missing the point - “trickle up” was used as a way to make fun of “trickle down”.
Corona-walrus | a month ago
Sorry, I don't understand humor 🤪
harbison215 | a month ago
If we just cut taxes for the rich a little more, everything will boom! Trust us, bro.
-Republicans
Training-Context-69 | a month ago
This is a bipartisan issue. Trump is a buffoon yes, but the wealth gap widened considerably under Biden's tenure as well and was rising well before it too. Its a feature of crony capitalism and our materialisti & individualistic society. Not solely a republican issue.
harbison215 | a month ago
“Under Biden’s tenure” doesn’t always prove that “Biden caused it.”
Edit; knee jerks to “but Biden.” Has post and comment history hidden.
Training-Context-69 | a month ago
Reddit is brain dead in general when it comes to critical thinking but my point in mentioning that is not to blame Biden, but to illustrate that regardless of whose president, the wealth gap grows and the rich get richer. It’s delusional to think otherwise, and to think this isn’t the case shows you have a poor understanding of how our financial systems our set up, and how our economy is set up to require infinite growth in order to be stable. Can’t have an infinitely growing economy without wealth inequality occurring. It’s not right but that’s how our system is built and no sitting president can or will change that fact unless the culture of our country fundamentally changes. And we are so individualistic and materialistic that we easily distract ourselves to make said changes. Trump will be out of office in 3 years, a democrat will presumably take over and absolutely nothing about our situation will change for the reasons I mentioned. But you can still be willfully ignorant of that if you want and point fingers instead acknowledging that the political parties are just two wings on the same bird.
harbison215 | a month ago
Your spiel has very little to do with my original comment.
rocketpastsix | a month ago
There’s one way but it’s not fun.
a_library_socialist | a month ago
Is it a french machine?
rocketpastsix | a month ago
That’s one way
Swangthemthings | a month ago
I was reading that war becomes the new economy but is that just fear mongering, or is it more likely with each passing day?
LowBarometer | a month ago
Don't forget to add that Blackstone and others credit finance companies have halted withdrawals.
Adderall_Rant | a month ago
Usually with pitchforks and torches
hotdog7423 | a month ago
Freaking Trump took him a year to destroy the economy
Chemical-Fault-7331 | a month ago
Stop supporting these big corporations. Stop purchasing from Amazon, Walmart, etc. and if you’re a small business, stop doing business with aws, oracle, etc.
It’s not hard to find smaller companies in the cloud services provider space. Same goes for vendors in supply chain.
FlyingBishop | a month ago
Which ones aren't funded by the Saudis? I mean the thing here is it's really a self-own, they knocked out the Saudi's money which killed their circular financing.
finniruse | a month ago
Next jobs figures: and miraculously, no jobs were lost.
Vox-Machi-Buddies | a month ago
It just amazes me there are companies for which 30,000 employees is a fraction of their total. Oracle has (had) 162,000 employees. That's insane to me.
To say nothing of companies like Amazon who have 1.56 million employees.
I've never worked for a company that had more than 20,000 employees total. And that company did a ton of stuff, not just related to their core products, but they in-housed a lot of support functionality as well.
Impossible-Flight250 | a month ago
This is Trump’s “Golden Age.” He and his friends get richer and can lie, cheat, and steal, while the rest of us suffer.
a_library_socialist | a month ago
Library socialism
DELALADE | a month ago
Society is not America 1 - we will do just fine once you fall yanks
Swimming_Agent_1063 | a month ago
Waaaah!! Waaah waaah! Waaaaah!!!
Wurm42 | a month ago
Wow. So banks won't lend Oracle any more money? That's a significant milestone.
If banks refuse to lend other tech companies money for AI data centers...well, it doesn't burst the AI bubble, but it DOES stop the bubble from growing further.
tryexceptifnot1try | a month ago
OpenAI just recently reduced it's target data center spend from $1.4 trillion to $600 billion which is good since it can't even afford $200 billion. That forecast was always stupid, but it underpinned the entire ecosystem. Now they are cancelling the rest of the build out at Stargate Abilene due to slowing demand growth. Larry made a very big and terrible bet that he put real money and debt into. The stock is down over 50% from it's peak and he's getting sued by bond holders. The energy price shock in LNG is about to pop the bubble completely. Prepare for some wild shit
BraPaj2121 | a month ago
Fuck I live in Abilene.. feels like our population doubled last few years with this data center and air force base.. both may be temporary, the fallout is getting kinda scary
No_Replacement4304 | a month ago
I'm in Oklahoma and we have data centers popping up everywhere and no one really wants them. I guess they provide some jobs.
_solitare | a month ago
they cause hell on the environment. im sorry.
Dust601 | a month ago
I mean they provide some jobs as far as building them. (Unfortunately most bring in own teams to build.), but once they’re built they provide very few permanent positions.
Ohio is the exact same way. Despite the fact absolutely no one wants them our politicians keep giving them insane tax breaks, and incentives for 10+ years.
No_Replacement4304 | a month ago
One of our local fire departments straight up refused a huge grant from Google. They just come in and bribe everyone.
colcardaki | a month ago
Oh I feel so bad for sone of the worst people in America. I can only hope that the Ellisons are reduced to only being able to rent private jets.
Patsanon1212 | a month ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Oracle was on of the companies that was supposed to be making actual money off the AI boom today instead of at some nebulous point in the future. They are the ones at the end of all that capex. They were one of the proverbial shovel salesmen in the gold rush analogy.
I actually think that makes this a bigger harbinger than it seems.
Timmetie | a month ago
Where did you get that idea, NVidia is the shovel salesman.
The people building, and operating, datacenters are the ones making the least money compared to the highest running investments and debts.
Even the modelmakers could just stop their investments in training and continue their current product, the datacenters can't, they're leasing half their stuff, they have energy bills to pay.
If the bubble bursts it starts with the datacenters, pretty much all risk is stacked there and NVidea is already desperately propping them up.
hannabarberaisawhore | a month ago
Dumb dumb here. Could this result in huge data losses in the future?
Zookeeper187 | a month ago
These companies are screwed the most. They will end up holding all these data centers with maintenance and obsoletion. Nvidia is true winner as they already collected money by then.
themiracy | a month ago
I mean if Oracle would just skip its daily Starbucks for a year I'm sure it can save up the money and build the data center without a loan. /s
The article doesn't seem to share that much insight on bank sector thinking - I am particularly curious about what banking sector experts "really think" about the real potential for AI to affect TFP. This is also a constant difference between the thinking of the investment crowd and economists. If you look at TFP with constant national prices during the last sixty years, the internet bubble is smack dab in the middle of a straight line. People underrate the likelihood that AI might do exactly the same thing.
spotcatspot | a month ago
I’m sure larry can pull himself up with his bootstraps.
_solitare | a month ago
look at blue owl and blackrock.
Coca-karl | a month ago
Not only that. Senior management has prioritized the AI data centers above maintaining staff to develop and distribute products and services that have demonstrated value.
Governments who care about their people more than the wealthy need to start planning for the economic fallout. Either AI hits and everyone loses their mid level management class creating an ungodly division in society or AI brings down the economic reserves of the biggest companies in the world causing unpredictable collapse.
thomasfr | a month ago
I have always wondered how large percentage of Oracle's revenue comes from suing their own customers and if it's below or above average.
s1m0n8 | a month ago
I am pretty happy if Oracle is impacted, they are a shitty company.
bularry | a month ago
I work in finance and find this to be difficult to believe. Oracle is a monster
the_only_kungfu_cat | a month ago
Well that means now the stock market will finally start showing actual negative returns
findingmike | a month ago
S&P is already negative for the year.
Kind_Session_6986 | a month ago
Does Pam know? Can we tell her she can start doing her job now?
Release the Epstein-Trump Files!
questionname | a month ago
And investment firm like BlackRock has cap customers from withdrawing from certain portfolio
edit: sorry, BlackRock, not BlackStone
Wurm42 | a month ago
Really? I missed that.
questionname | a month ago
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/blackrock-fund-limits-withdrawals-redemptions-200405824.html
Wurm42 | a month ago
Thanks for the link. That IS a warning sign!
So_HauserAspen | a month ago
No. It will burst the bubble. It's a ponzi scheme and needs money funneled into it to keep it from collapsing.
Super_Mario_Luigi | a month ago
The internet is obsessed with trying to discredit AI. Just because some overshot, does not mean AI won't be huge
misterxboxnj | a month ago
Yes. It was the same with the dot com bubble. The Internet was still important but it took a major crash to correct the overvaluation of companies. What rose from the ashes was the strongest companies. Same will happen with AI. When the bubble burst those left standing will be the string companies.
simonsays123 | a month ago
Is this actually news? It is on multiple subreddits this morning as if it’s a new announcement, but the actual post is from Feb 2.
This is the original Jan 30 article from CIO that was being aggregated by livemint on Feb 2: https://www.cio.com/article/4125103/oracle-may-slash-up-to-30000-jobs-to-fund-ai-data-center-expansion-as-us-banks-retreat.html
downey_jayr | a month ago
The original report of 30k is also from December, it has gone down since then.
CyberSmith31337 | a month ago
Heh. If Oracle can’t borrow from banks anymore, that means the Ellisons are going to be in trouble. They have a LOT of financial commitments to data centers, and now they’re going to lean on their “partners” (NVIDIA, OpenAI) to cushion this loss. Except OpenAI is now a government contractor and not a partner, and NVIDIA scaled back their investment in OpenAI already.
There’s going to be a whole bunch of unfulfilled contracts coming up.
crazycatlady331 | a month ago
If Oracle stops eating avocado toast, then they can buy the data centers.
brian5476 | a month ago
That might not be enough. They may need to limit their lunch to a tortilla of a small-ish piece off chicken, a piece of broccoli, and one other thing.
Failing that, cheaper cuts, such as liver, can be used instead.
PickingPies | a month ago
If they can afford a data center they should aim for a shared bedroom.
CoderDevo | a month ago
FYI - Oracle is a publicly traded company.
That said, Larry holds 40% of those shares.
So this affects his net worth, but not his bank accounts, per se.
Soft_Database_3747 | a month ago
Our tax money will fill the gap. Trump will call it too big to let fail, just like bush
kneemahp | a month ago
They’re going to slash so many jobs from paramount and warner brothers too.
Obvious-Hunt19 | a month ago
Netflix laughing their asses off
Obvious-Hunt19 | a month ago
Taxpayer bailout of all these AI fucks incoming
JC_Hysteria | a month ago
…you do know his family has diversified past Oracle, right?
The whole Paramount deal? Owning a Hawaiian island with resorts? He is a bank.
This doesn’t prevent the family from borrowing indefinitely- the banks just want to diversify away from data centers because they’re already highly concentrated in them.
This country is betting on data center/AI tech investments succeeding. If they don’t, the S&P won’t grow as fast.
CyberSmith31337 | a month ago
Yeah. And Paramount has already been downgraded to “junk” status.
That’s the point of the post. It’s looking like, even with his massive billions, he is leveraged to the maximum.
JC_Hysteria | a month ago
Yeah, that entity has a pile of debt to climb out of after the acquisition.
If he’s personally guaranteeing ~$44 billion so the deal goes through, he has confidence his other investments would be able to cover that. There are endless financial instruments at this scale- that’s the point.
Timmetie | a month ago
> The whole Paramount deal?
Heavily financed by Middle Eastern governmental trusts and other banks.
Paramount doesn't diversify him it just deepens his debt, no way will Paramount ever make any positive cashflow.
JC_Hysteria | a month ago
I don’t understand your argument. Are you saying the Ellisons are going to be insolvent as a result of the Paramount deal?
His other cash-flowing businesses are projecting to cover what he’s personally guaranteed…and they could easily burn a lot more cash if they choose to- but likely wouldn’t, if the strategy is failing.
If Paramount fails, their family’s fortune is still secure. It’s just the son’s big bet with dad’s financial backing.
128-NotePolyVA | a month ago
Hmm. Oracle seems to have faith that its AI data centers for Open AI are important for them, more so than the financial strain the projects are putting on the company.
ThisIsAbuse | a month ago
Oracle has had issues for a while - too much debt. META, Microsoft, google and others are not in trouble and have deep pockets for funding for building data centers. Now getting enough power (vs money) is now THE issue slowing things down.
FooBarBuzzBoom | a month ago
Yep, Google has issue with the cash flow now. They are investing too much and the return on capital is too low. They are no near close to this situation where Oracle is, but if they keep doing so, they will.
Stlouisken | a month ago
Oracle has roughly $20 billion cash on hand and Larry Ellison is worth around $200 billion, most of it Oracle stock.
If Larry/Oracle is so confident in AI and its expansion, why not finance it themselves? Use your wealth as collateral.
They need $156 billion for their AI expansion plans. Sounds like between Oracle cash and Larry’s wealth, they can go that route.
But instead they going to lay off 30,000 people to save between $8-10 billion.
threeactjack | a month ago
there is a cost to using cash on hand — both the opportunity cost and the cost to repatriate it
financing these things can still happen in other ways, like by issuing corporate paper. But that doesn’t make quite as flamboyant of a headline as “omg Oracle can’t get money from banks AI is dead”
p_pio | a month ago
Tbf for Oracle it's just return to norm. They vastly expanded they labor force in 2022 and 2023 from 132K in 2021 to 164K by the end of 2023. In 2025 it was 162K so with 30K lay offs that's return to 2022 level. And that's the problem when talking about the Big Techs lay offs. They might point out not towards structural problems of the sector, but rather be just correction of overconfidence and overemployment it presented in last few years.
Darkmayday | a month ago
It's not a good thing to be back to 5 years ago
ReturnOfBigChungus | a month ago
It’s way more than 5 years, Oracle had like 120k employees back in 2013, I think that level is about steady state for them. They’re not a growth company they’re a “milk the cash out of the dozens of products you’ve acquired” company.
p_pio | a month ago
Yes, of course. But the reason is important. In many sectors,especially in high end services (big tech, consulting etc) there was strong demand growth during pandemic and in first 2-3 years after. Companies started strong recruitment drive hoping that it will repay as market was growing... but it stabilized. And so they were left with overemployment. E.g. numbers I used for Oracle: they increased their staff by 25% in 2 years.
Now many of them just use AI as excuse as they have to strongly reduce their employee numbers to more realistic numbers based on market dynamics that aren't created by stimuli checks+0 interest rates overdrive.
threeactjack | a month ago
It sure can be if the company hired too many people, has way too much corporate debt, and placed big bets on things that are not working out / taking too long to work out.
Oracle isn’t healthy right now, at least not compared to its peers. It needs to make a change.
Swimming_Agent_1063 | a month ago
No shit, but it’s a common trend.
Available-Range-5341 | a month ago
But there has been a lack of job creation for many years outside low pay sectors and nursing
So the fact that they supposedly grew but BLS reports were flat for the “information” and “financial” sector = we would have been negative all those years if they hadn’t over hired
Not good no matter how you spin it
p_pio | a month ago
What you say is true for 2024+ period. Prior to that profesional services as well as IT were drivers on labor market. And as I said, they got strong increase in demand in 2020-2022 period, which resulted in strong overemployment there.
If you employ people based on e.g. (didn't check data, it's pure example) assumption of 25% market growth in next 5 years, and the market will grow by 15%, you will end up with overemployment despite decent growth.
threeactjack | a month ago
This is spot on. I think a lot of Reddit is just parroting the recent BLS report right now. They weren’t paying attention during the MASSIVE hiring spree with COVID.
threeactjack | a month ago
“Many years” is not fair. These same tech companies EXPLODED in size during the COVID era. It was a hiring spree unlike anything tech has seen since 2000.
Just one example: Facebook went from…. 2019: 40,000 staff 2021: 80,000 staff
That is both insane hiring and also not sustainable unless some reeeeally big bets pay off.
Available-Range-5341 | a month ago
I'm talking about BLS reports. Finance + "information" + "professional and business services" have basically been flat for at least two years, some closer to three. (I can't give the exact date because BLS site sucks for research past info, but I remember the cliff-fall happening late 2023)
threeactjack | a month ago
Yeah this is exactly my point — of course IT has been flat for 24 months. ZIRP ended and hiring stagnated. Go back to 2019 and work forward from there.
Heck, go back further — since 2010 the entire IT industry has been on a giant tear of growth.
Available-Range-5341 | a month ago
I mean that's cool and I'm not arguing against that. It's just a common theme in this sub that the world was perfect then Trump ruined everything, so 80% of commenters like and act like everything went to shit in Feb 2025, which is not true. I thought you were one of them since that's the agenda most commenters have
SwampYankee | a month ago
How are they going to "blame AI" for the layoffs if it is because nobody wants to finance building out for AI that nobody wants? Clammy Sammy gonna have to but on his tap shoes and put on a song & dance for new ~~suckers~~ investors.
threeactjack | a month ago
The “ai made me lay people off” thing is going to pass, and soon. CEOs only get to use that while the AI tide is high. But we’re already racing back to business fundamentals — huge focus on capital efficiency and pure EBITDA.
DjCyric | a month ago
This could ripple in waves throughout Big Tech. Oracle was powering the data centers to use Nvidia chips to enable AIs for Meta, and others. This could lead to more job losses across the sector as other companies deal with the fallout.
Oracle was supposed to build 13 data centers or so but only completed one or two.
ZombieWoofers48 | a month ago
Read a hot take a while back that the other big tech company’s hate Oracle and basically lured them into to blowing their money on AI data centers to try and bankrupt them once and for all, seems legit.
threeactjack | a month ago
lol this is about as reliable as “my uncle works at Nintendo”
TGAILA | a month ago
AI is inevitable. It's been developing for generations from IBM’s Deep Blue defeating a world champion chess player to what it is today. The most advanced technology is in military and healthcare, which dominate large portions of the economy and budgets.
Voidless-One | a month ago
You know what they say about absolutes.
PaintedParadise | a month ago
only a sith deals with those
hannabarberaisawhore | a month ago
Absolute power corrupts absolutely?
OG_WSB | a month ago
AI cant fix my sink bud... but sure I'll bite. And exactly how do they plan on improving my life as an American?
My bet is that AI is used to figure out how to put more micro transactions and subscriptions into shit. Praise be, just what we needed!!!
Eldric-Darkfire | a month ago
just wait until it has bias due to ads
FlyingBishop | a month ago
Amazon warehouses are approaching 1:1 robots:workers. Google Waymo is doing self-driving cars rolling out to more and more cities. Robotic AI doesn't demo over the internet, but it is growing and it's just as much if not more a part of these AI buildouts as the LLM slop.
Dadoftwingirls | a month ago
Theoretically, it can solve energy issues, the climate crisis, fix the economy, advance medicine and eradicate diseases.
More likely, it'll be used to make the rich and powerful more so. Or it'll destroy us all.