SEATTLE — Cloud computing giant Oracle is laying off 101 employees in Seattle, less than a month after reducing its local workforce.
The cuts from the Austin, Texas-based company, disclosed Tuesday in a state regulatory filing, are the latest in a series of layoff waves hitting the tech industry this year. Since May, Oracle along with cybersecurity firm F5, T-Mobile, Amazon and Microsoft have all either announced or confirmed layoffs.
Some waves have been large. Between several rounds over the last few months, Microsoft let go of more than 15,000 workers.
Amazon confirmed an undisclosed amount of layoffs in July, but reports said it could have affected hundreds in the company’s cloud division.
Most of the tech companies that cut jobs this year have said the layoffs were a result of shifting priorities. As spending is focused on the artificial intelligence race, redundant roles and teams are getting the ax in favor of a streamlined workforce.
The companies aren’t blaming AI technology or saying roles are being replaced by automation. Rather, they’re allocating resources differently. Outside of the AI race, the coffee giant Starbucks also said it was pushing for a slimmer, more efficient corporate workforce when it laid off more than 1,000 employees in February.
But at least one company has said AI adoption is directly resulting in layoffs. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Tuesday that the company has replaced 4,000 customer service jobs with AI. In the Seattle area, 93 Salesforce workers were laid off Wednesday.
Oracle did not respond to a request for comment and hasn’t said what’s driving layoffs at the company.
Before the company laid off 161 workers in August and another 101 on Tuesday, Oracle had 3,900 employees in the Seattle area, according to the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Oracle, which was one of the Seattle-area’s largest tech employers aside from homegrown Amazon and Microsoft, has a dwindling physical footprint in Seattle and Bellevue as its workforce shrinks.
The company, formerly headquartered in Silicon Valley, Calif., grew quickly in the half decade leading up to the pandemic. Like other Silicon Valley tech companies, Oracle turned its once small outpost in Seattle into one of its larger engineering hubs.
But over the past few years, the hub’s physical presence has shrunk. Last year, the company left its downtown Bellevue office. Oracle had occupied three floors in an office tower, according to city permit records. Commercial brokerage CBRE confirmed last year that Oracle decided not to renew the lease.
Oracle also shed a sizable chunk of its space in downtown Seattle in 2023, according to CBRE. The brokerage reported Oracle left almost 100,000 square feet of space in Seattle’s Century Square tower, near Westlake Park.