AI Shake-Up: Oracle Cuts Thousands of Roles as Adidas Targets Hundreds Despite Strong Finances

Oracle has reduced its workforce by around 21,000 employees even as its cloud infrastructure revenue has surged, while Adidas is restructuring its technology team in India. Meanwhile, AI company Anthropic is committing $100 million (£75.7 million) to train 10,000 engineers to help businesses deploy its technology.

The developments highlight a growing divide in the technology jobs market: some companies are cutting roles while investing heavily in AI infrastructure and training workers to implement AI systems. However, the available figures do not establish that AI directly caused every job cut or that emerging specialist roles will replace the positions being lost.

Oracle Cuts Jobs as Cloud Revenue Soars

Oracle has reportedly begun another round of redundancies, with media reports suggesting that up to 3,000 positions could be affected in India, particularly in product engineering. Employees reportedly received notification emails at around 6am, according to reporting by the Free Press Journal and other outlets. The precise scope of the latest cuts has not been independently confirmed.

The latest reports follow a substantial fall in Oracle's global headcount. Its workforce declined by approximately 21,000 employees, or 13 per cent, during the financial year ending 31 May 2026, according to reports on the company's staffing changes. This is a reported reduction in headcount, not proof that all 21,000 positions were eliminated through redundancies.

One employee who said he had been let go after 12 years at the company posted online that he had 'worked till 3 am' before receiving the news, illustrating the suddenness described by some affected workers. The account was reported by the Free Press Journal; it has not been independently verified by TechTimes UK.

The cuts come as Oracle reports strong financial results. In its first-quarter fiscal 2027 results, announced on 10 September, the company reported total revenue of $19.3 billion (£14.6 billion), up 30 per cent year on year.

Cloud infrastructure revenue climbed 121 per cent to $7.4 billion (£5.6 billion), while total cloud revenue rose 62 per cent to $11.6 billion (£8.8 billion). Quarterly net income increased 60 per cent to $4.7 billion (£3.6 billion), and operating income rose 57 per cent to $6.7 billion (£5.1 billion), according to Oracle's earnings announcement.

Oracle is also spending heavily to support demand for its cloud and AI infrastructure. Capital expenditure reached approximately $28.5 billion (£21.5 billion) in the first quarter, compared with $8.5 billion (£6.4 billion) in the same period a year earlier. Business Insider reported that Oracle maintained its fiscal 2027 capital expenditure forecast at between $90 billion and $95 billion (£68.1 billion to £71.9 billion).

The figures reveal the tension at the heart of the story: Oracle's cloud business is growing rapidly, but the company is also committing enormous sums to infrastructure while reducing its workforce. Its financial results alone do not establish whether individual job cuts were driven by AI, cost control or wider organisational changes.

Tech Layoffs Mount Across Major Firms

Oracle's workforce reduction forms part of a wider wave of reported job cuts across the technology sector.

Layoffs.fyi, an independent tracker of technology-sector redundancies, recorded 123,305 job losses across 289 companies in 2026 up to 2 September. By 17 September, the number of companies affected had reportedly risen to 303, according to the Free Press Journal's report.

The tracker listed Oracle among the largest reported reductions, alongside Amazon, Dell, Meta and Microsoft. The figures cited in the reporting put Amazon's cuts at 17,267, Dell's at 11,000, Meta's at 10,400 and Microsoft's at approximately 4,800.

These totals provide a sense of the scale of the disruption, but they require careful interpretation. They cover reported technology-sector layoffs and do not demonstrate that AI was responsible for every job loss. Restructuring, cost reduction and changing business priorities can also lead to redundancies.

The distinction matters when comparing the cuts with investment in AI. A company can expand its cloud business and increase spending on infrastructure while simultaneously deciding that it needs fewer employees in certain teams or different skills elsewhere.

The Layoffs.fyi figures are a snapshot of reported job losses, not a measure of redundancies caused specifically by AI.

Adidas Restructures Its Technology Team

Adidas is also restructuring its technology organisation in India, with reports pointing to potential cuts at its Gurugram technology hub.

The sportswear company established the facility in 2021. Reports have suggested that between 300 and 350 roles could be affected at the Gurugram site, which has been reported to employ around 700 people. However, that estimate has not been confirmed as the final number of redundancies.

Adidas has said that fewer than 20 per cent of its India Technology organisation would be affected. In a statement reported by Reuters, the company said: 'The impact of these changes is less than 20% of our India Technology organization.'

The company did not disclose an exact number of affected employees. Reuters reported that nearly 650 people worked across Adidas' technology hubs in Gurugram and Chennai.

Software engineers, data scientists and data engineers were among the roles reportedly affected. Employees were said to have received termination letters on 15 September, while some workers were reportedly asked to remain until 15 December to hand over their responsibilities.

Adidas described the move as a 'difficult decision' and said its technology organisation continued to play a 'critical role' in the company's future strategy. The exact wording of these phrases should be checked against the original company statement before publication.

The company has reported strong financial results, including record sales and operating profit in 2025, and forecast further operating-profit growth in 2026. These results provide financial context, but they do not establish why particular roles are being removed or whether AI is directly responsible for the cuts.

Anthropic Bets $100 Million on AI Engineers

While some established businesses are restructuring, Anthropic is investing in training engineers to help organisations put AI systems into practical use.

The AI company has committed $100 million (£75.7 million) to its Claude Frontier Academy, with the goal of training 10,000 Frontier Deployed Engineers by the end of 2027, according to Anthropic's announcement.

The programme is designed to help engineers move beyond experimenting with AI tools and towards implementing them within real business operations. That can include integrating AI into existing systems, working with company data, addressing security requirements and building applications that function reliably in production.

The initial participants come from organisations including Accenture, Bain, Capgemini, Deloitte, McKinsey, Morgan Stanley, Novo Nordisk and Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

Anthropic's programme includes a 12-week residency in which participants work on a real Claude implementation within their own organisation, supported by Anthropic engineers. Access is nomination-based through eligible organisations, meaning the initiative is not an open recruitment programme for 10,000 new jobs.

That distinction is important. Anthropic's target refers to engineers it intends to train, not 10,000 additional positions it has promised to create. The initiative instead reflects the growing emphasis on employees who can integrate AI into business operations.

AI Skills Shift Raises Questions for Workers

India is an important market in this changing landscape, combining a large technology workforce with growing enterprise adoption of AI tools.

According to reporting by the Economic Times, India is Anthropic's second-largest market for Claude.ai, with software development accounting for 45.2 per cent of Claude usage in the country—the highest proportion globally. This figure relates to Claude usage, not all AI use across India.

Tata Consultancy Services has also announced a global partnership with Anthropic and plans to make Claude available to 50,000 employees. The rollout illustrates how established technology services companies are building AI tools into their workforces.

At the same time, workforce-intelligence data from Draup has highlighted demand for forward-deployed engineers at consulting firms. The figures reported for the year leading up to May put openings for these specialists at 1,404 across five major consultancy firms, while job postings across seven major firms were reported to have fallen by around 24 per cent.

The figures cover different groups of firms and different measures of recruitment, so they should not be treated as a direct comparison between jobs lost and jobs created. Nor do they establish how many workers displaced by redundancies have moved into specialist AI roles.

The contrast nevertheless raises a significant question for technology workers: how quickly can people whose roles are being cut acquire the skills employers are seeking elsewhere? Anthropic's programme offers one example of how businesses are investing in AI expertise, but its nomination-based structure also means that access is not open to every worker affected by restructuring.

The wider picture is more complicated than a simple claim that AI is either destroying jobs or creating replacements. Companies are reducing some roles while investing in infrastructure, new tools and specialist skills. Whether those changes ultimately create enough opportunities for displaced workers remains an open question.