Oracle stock rises in premarket on plans to cut thousands of jobs

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Oracle Corp. signage on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Wednesday, Dec. 31, 2025. Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle rose in premarket trading on Wednesday as the multinational tech conglomerate looks to cut thousands of jobs to free up cash to build AI data center infrastructure. The software giant has started telling its 162,000-strong workforce that thousands of people will be affected in a new round of layoffs, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC on Tuesday. Its shares were last up 2.6% in early market trading on Wednesday. Oracle declined to comment on CNBC's report. Investors remain uneasy about the company's hefty capital expenditure on data centers that can handle AI workloads. While shares closed up nearly 6% Tuesday, Oracle's stock is down roughly 25% so far this year.

The company announced plans in early February to fundraise up to $50 billion during the 2025 calendar year through a mixture of debt and equity, to expand capacity for contracted cloud demand from customers, including Nvidia , Meta , OpenAI, Advanced Micro Devices and xAI. Major AI hyperscalers Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have also committed to capital expenditure of nearly $700 billion to fund their AI buildouts this year, which has alarmed investors as it will reduce the companies' free cash flow without a clear promise on near-term returns.

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