MENA Newswire, TEXAS: Oracle has announced plans to raise $45 billion to $50 billion in gross proceeds during calendar year 2026 to expand cloud infrastructure capacity for artificial intelligence workloads, as questions swirl in markets about the cost of building data centers at scale. Separately, an investment bank research report has said Oracle is considering workforce reductions of 20,000 to 30,000 roles, a figure the company has not confirmed.
Oracle said the financing plan is designed to fund additional capacity to meet contracted demand from its largest cloud infrastructure customers. The company said it aims to use a balanced mix of debt and equity to maintain an investment grade balance sheet, with its board approving the transactions. Oracle did not announce any job cuts in the financing statement.
Under the plan, Oracle said it expects to raise about half of the funding through equity and equity linked issuances, including mandatory convertible preferred securities and a newly authorized at the market equity program of up to $20 billion. The remaining funding is expected to come from a single issuance of investment grade senior unsecured bonds early in 2026, and Oracle said it does not expect to issue additional bonds during the calendar year beyond that transaction.
Oracle said the capacity expansion is tied to contracted demand from customers that include AMD, Meta, NVIDIA, OpenAI, TikTok and xAI. The company said the financing is intended to support the buildout of cloud infrastructure needed to serve large scale AI training and inference workloads, which typically require dense computing hardware, power, and specialized facilities.
Layoff reports tied to analyst note
In a Jan. 30 research report, TD Cowen said Oracle is considering cutting 20,000 to 30,000 jobs and selling some activities as it funds AI data center expansion, including a possible sale of its healthcare software unit. The report said such job cuts could free $8 billion to $10 billion in cash flow. Oracle has not announced layoffs associated with the report’s figures.
The research report referenced Oracle’s ownership of Cerner, which Oracle acquired in a deal valued at about $28.3 billion that closed on June 8, 2022. Oracle has not announced any plan to divest Cerner. The report’s workforce reduction range and its discussion of asset sales reflect the bank’s analysis rather than a disclosed corporate decision.
The same report said multiple U.S. banks have pulled back from Oracle linked data center project lending, raising questions among investors about the pace and cost of financing new capacity. Oracle, in its financing statement, said it is pursuing a balanced approach across debt and equity and identified Goldman Sachs as lead for the senior unsecured bond offering and Citigroup as lead for the at the market equity program and the mandatory convertible preferred equity offering.
Bondholders sue over AI financing disclosures
Oracle is also facing litigation tied to its AI infrastructure funding. Bondholders filed a proposed class action on Jan. 14 in a New York state court in Manhattan, alleging they suffered losses because Oracle failed to disclose the need to sell significant additional debt to build out AI infrastructure. The suit names Oracle and several current and former executives, including Larry Ellison, Safra Catz and Maria Smith. Oracle declined to comment on the lawsuit.
The legal complaint focuses on investors who bought $18 billion of notes and bonds Oracle issued on Sept. 25, 2025, and alleges the offering documents were misleading about additional borrowing needs. In separate public statements, Oracle has said its 2026 financing plan is aimed at building additional cloud capacity to meet contracted customer demand, and it has described the transactions as part of maintaining transparency with investors while expanding its cloud infrastructure business.