Oracle Layoffs Hit Abilene Stargate Data Centre Despite OpenAI Deal Claims
In Short
Oracle's layoffs struck its flagship Abilene Stargate site, cutting jobs even as the company touts massive AI infrastructure spending.
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Oracle Layoffs Hit Abilene Stargate Data Centre Despite OpenAI Deal Claims
Oracle's September 14 layoffs didn't spare Abilene, Texas - the very site the company has repeatedly showcased as evidence that its partnership with OpenAI is running smoothly. One worker there, an IC2 within OCI who says he'd only joined on February 2, shared his experience on the subreddit r/employeesOfOracle: his termination email went out at 5am Central, but he never actually saw it. Instead, he found out something was wrong when his badge stopped working at the entrance gate. By then, his Slack access was already gone. His most recent performance review, he noted, had read "meets expectations." Another user in the same thread mentioned that Customer Hardware Support teams were cut across Abilene, Phoenix, and Ashburn.
Abilene isn't just another site on Oracle's map - it's the centerpiece of its Stargate campus, the location Oracle regularly points to when discussing its 200MW of operational capacity and an eight-building construction project it claims is proceeding on schedule. Ironically, it's also the site OpenAI has chosen not to expand further, opting instead for clusters equipped with newer Nvidia chips, and the same facility that lenders reportedly refused to finance with Oracle listed as tenant. Oracle doesn't even own the property - it leases it from Crusoe under a 15-year agreement valued at over a billion dollars annually. Oracle has not issued any comment regarding the layoffs.
Access cut before the layoff notice even arrived
Workers described a strikingly consistent pattern. Federated logins began failing around 4am Eastern, Slack sessions dropped between 5am and 5:30am, and the official email from "Oracle Leadership" didn't land until 6am - by which point many employees were already locked out. One OCI worker said his login worked briefly before booting him out entirely. Another learned the news through a text from a coworker while out on a morning run.
Reports poured in throughout the morning from across OCI security, CI/CD, enterprise engineering, observability, executive escalations, Fusion, NetSuite sales, Customer Success Services, Oracle Health, EPM, HR Technology, and data center compliance teams. Employees monitoring Slack's member count estimated the US workforce had shrunk by roughly 3,200 compared to the previous Friday.
Severance breakdown
Oracle's severance offer amounts to four weeks of base pay plus one additional week for every year of service, and unlike the March version of this plan - which capped total payouts at 26 weeks - the latest documentation doesn't mention any cap. That formula lines up with figures shared on Reddit: an eight-month data center technician received four weeks, a four-year database employee got seven weeks and called it "a kick in the nuts," and an IC5 with 7.5 years of tenure received ten weeks. For comparison, Salesforce's standard severance can reach up to 30 weeks, while Microsoft offered as much as 39 weeks earlier this summer.
The financial backdrop
The scale of Oracle's AI investment makes these cuts particularly striking. The company reported $28.5 billion in first-quarter capital expenditure, up sharply from $8.5 billion a year prior, while maintaining its fiscal 2027 forecast of $90 billion to $95 billion. It also expanded its restructuring budget by roughly $700 million on Friday, bringing the total to about $2.8 billion, with part of that tied to AI adoption across various business functions. Headcount had already dropped by 21,000 over the year ending May 31, leaving the company with roughly 141,000 employees heading into September 14. One Abilene-based employee summed it up bluntly on the subreddit - having previously worked at both IBM and Microsoft, he said he'd land on his feet, he just needed to get out of town first.
