Banker claims Oracle may slash up to 30,000 jobs, sell health unit to pay for AI build-out

Oracle could cut up to 30,000 jobs and sell health tech unit Cerner to ease its AI datacenter financing challenges, investment banker TD Cowen has claimed, amid changing sentiment on Big Red's massive build-out plans. A research note from TD Cowen states that finding equity and debt investors are increasingly questioning how …

[Evil Auditor]

Why does Oracle Crop (sic) not slash 160'000ish employees to pay for the AI to build itself and relieve the world of their existence?

/sarcasm

[b0llchit]

No sarcasm, please!

They must be able to replace all of the employees with their AI. It will all pay for itself and AI will make a gazillion in profit when all those employees are made redundant. And then the AI will be able to sell the AI to AI to do AI with AI to make AI money that makes AI rich to build more AI.

[EdSaxby]

I was at home yesterday doing some DIY interior painting and decorating... I was so heartened to think in a year or two AI will be doing all this messy work for me.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"heartened to think in a year or two AI will be doing all this messy work for me."

Never really imagined Larry and Sam in the interior decorating game. You never know… but you would have to watch them like a hawk to ensure the space behind your pictures was also painted.

The pair might be more successful resurrecting Wayne and Arthur Dodgey's Dodgey Brothers franchise although arguably hardly a novelty in their case.

[Paul Herber]

In a few years time we will all be complaining about the huge AI painting business we all know as Big Magnolia and the sister wallpapering company Flock You.

[AMBxx]

Wasn't it Larry Ellison who used to ask employees what they did so that he could automate all those who had nothing to do with selling or writing their software.

Soon all Oracle will be left with is their salesteam and lawyers (they're like cockroaches, even AI won't finish them off).

[Efer Brick]

Here's hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all based on stargate building 300billion worth of AI datacenters.

I would suggest that huge promises are made to pump everyone up, but in actual fact only a fraction will be realised in the medium term.

[elsergiovolador]

Ask

Did they ask AI what could go wrong?

[Evil Auditor]

Re: Ask

No. And neither did they ask themselves or anyone or anything else.

"...when did they abandon reason for madness?!"

[ecofeco]

Re: Ask

When did they ever embrace reason?

[Missing Semicolon]

Is this good?

Could Oracle actually borrow so much, that when OpenAI stops paying the bills, it goes under?

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: when OpenAI stops paying the bills, it goes under?

Please god, make it happen.

[DS999]

If the AI bubble burst was able to take out

Ellison, Zuck and Musk everything else that comes with it will have been well worth it!

[Doctor Huh?]

Looking a bit like the late 90's/early 00's

Does this remind anyone else of the "vendor financing" that propped up the Internet bubble at the turn of the century?

Everyone seems to be passing around the same stack of cash, or trading on outrageous values ("I'll trade you this $4 billion pen for 2 of those $2 billion pencils - my company is worth $1 trillion in office supplies alone").

What I remember from the bubble at the turn of the century was that it unleashed upon the world a crop of CEOs and aspiring CEOs who understood exactly how close they could get to the line of fraud without having to do more than pay a small fine with no admission of wrongdoing. Perhaps this time, we might remember to throw a few people in jail.

[Scene it all]

Re: Is this good?

All the AI bros are borrowing from each other. It is a house of cards and once one fails, they will all go.

[JacobZ]

AI job losses

Finally, a real example of AI adoption causing job losses

[Tron]

At the risk of disappointing you all...

When the bubble bursts, the circular economy contracts will all be cancelled and GAFA will keep however much investors' cash they have stashed in the bank. They will then buy the IP/data centres/chips from all the collapsed AI outfits for peanuts. They will then walk away from AI having made vast profits from it, and plan their next scam.

Your AI button will no longer work if you are a user, and you will get a polite sympathy card if you are an investor, explaining that all of your cash was paid, in good faith, to one of the collapsed companies: Investments can go down as well as up, and yours went all the way down. Thank you for your continued support through this difficult time. Have a nice day.

[teknopaul]

Re: At the risk of disappointing you all...

When the dot com bubble burst, they didn't turn off the Internet: & Google.com is still reachable to this day, although one wonders why.

I agree that the bubble will probably burst, but AI is not exactly tulips.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: At the risk of disappointing you all...

It is if costs outweigh the revenue to provide it.

Simply increasing the price is likely to accelerate the bubble collapse. Much of the Internet/Google adapted to live off an advertising driven model.

[Denarius]

is this victory for Postgres and MySQL ?

One can hope

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Uncle Larry have to sell one of his yachts?

It’s heartbreaking.

[sarusa]

This seems fine?

Anything that cripples Oracle in the long run is a positive. And I can't feel bad for anyone who would actually work for Oracle, basically Star Wars stormtroopers gleefully f@#ing customers. So win win.

[DartfordMan]

Redundancies

If these 20,000 - 30,000 employees can be made redundant to ease new investment, aren't the redundant already? Doesn't that mean that the management of the company is failing to run the company effiiciently? Maybe they should go as well.

[Bebu sa Ware]

"Banks in Asia appear more relaxed about Oracle's risk profile"

Makes one think.

US banks have never been overly fussy about who they lend money to. The orange felon has left a wake of defaulting loans behind him.

One would then have to wonder to whom these relaxed "Banks in Asia" wouldn't loan money too. I should try shaking them down for a decent wad to fund my combined hydrogen fusion reactor lead to gold transmuter. "When will we see the gold ?" "Soon, once the fusion reactor is working."

I suppose recovery might be more aggressive - the prospect of having one's toes severed with a pair of boltcutters would be powerful incentive not to muck with such single minded recovery oriented lenders.

[TimMaher]

Re: "Lead to gold transmuter”

“It’s Green my lord, pure Green!”

[steviebuk]

Burst, please, do it now

We all want to see Oracle go bankrupt over it.

[Badgerfruit]

A hundred and fifty six BILLION

Just say that slowly.

A figure that could probably end world hunger, make education available to all, help with many of societies problems.

But no. Spending it on burning the very planet they live on, in the hope of making even more obscene amounts of money.

Time for some people to be held up for crimes against humanity I think.

[CowHorseFrog]

The way AI and big tech is going there will be no more customers to buy any of their services with or without AI.