Oracle fires 21,000 employees to fund AI spending

(jpost.com)

73 points | by DemiGuru 15 hours ago ago

13 comments

  • dmix 14 hours ago ago

    AFAIK this article is not discussing new layoffs, this was previously discussed 3 months ago

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587935

    The angle of the article is basically they did these layoffs and now also face some serious debt risks. Which was also obvious a few months ago. Oracle made a huge gamble, even more so than other big tech firms.

  • unaib 14 hours ago ago

    Very good timing for this contract with the Pentagon then,at just the right amount.

    https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-awards-oracle-nea...

  • beardyw 13 hours ago ago

    AI companies want their customers to lay off people so that when they turn up the prices to "barely profitable" they will be forced to pay up.

  • ecocentrik 14 hours ago ago

    This news is a month old.

  • gordian-mind 13 hours ago ago

    Requiring $7 billion in collateral, nearly half the cost of the entire $15 billion project, to insure the utility’s full capital investment in case the company walks away, is completely insane. “Existing customers should not subsidize data centers” seems like pure demagogy there.

    • qlte 12 hours ago ago

      If the details in this article are correct, it’s because they need $7 billion dollars worth of power infrastructure built out for their 1GW datacenter, not an arbitrary punitive penalty.

      You seem convinced it has to be demagogy but that’s a significant amount of concentrated risk for the utility on a single project that could evaporate and leave them holding the bag, forcing rate increases for existing ratepayers.

      https://archive.md/voqjr

        Local utility We Energies’ “very large customer” tariff requires any data centre developer with an S&P rating below single A minus to post collateral in the form of cash or a letter of credit. The size of the collateral is determined by the value of any power plants and transmission lines built to service the data centre.
      • TitaRusell 12 hours ago ago

        These companies all need government funded infrastructure to profit from. Basically tax payer money.

        At least in a Cyberpunk world Arasaka has their own universities and power plants. We can't even have that.

  • krunck 11 hours ago ago
  • ChrisArchitect 14 hours ago ago

    [dupe]

    Recent related:

    Oracle could face $7B collateral bill for Wisconsin data centre

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48993488

    S&P Global has lowered Oracle’s creditworthiness from BBB to BBB-

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48909768

    And 3 months ago:

    Oracle slashes 30k jobs

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47587935

    (also this exact article yesterday with a bunch of upvotes and comments, but doesn't matter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025754)

  • rickydroll 12 hours ago ago

    Am I the only one who sees the similarity between Larry Ellison and Jean-Baptiste Emanuel Zorg? I mean, other than they're both evil and crazy.

    https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Jean-Baptiste_Emanuel_Zorg

  • danlitt 15 hours ago ago

    Just one more hit. Just one more hit. We're gonna make it this time. It's going to the moon....

  • sciencesama 14 hours ago ago

    jpost posting is very interesting !

    • krona 14 hours ago ago

      Larry is big news in Jerusalem, what do you expect?