Silicon Valley's job market is collapsing!? Oracle reportedly lays off 30,000 employees: banks cut off loans, stock price halved—Silicon Valley is experiencing its coldest winter yet!

30,000 jobs vanished in an instant: Silicon Valley's "system formatting"

According to investment banks TD Cowen 与 The Wall Street Journal According to the latest joint in-depth report, Oracle is launching its largest layoff plan in its 49-year history.

This involves as many as 30,000 positions, representing approximately 15% of its global workforce.

Unlike previous sporadic business adjustments, this round of layoffs is a top-down "systematic reorganization." In a leaked internal memo, Oracle executives described the move as a "resource redirection." However, to frontline employees, it appears more like a purge of "remnants of the old era."

The Cerner Department's "Great Retreat": Oracle's massive .3 billion acquisition in 2022, aimed at dominating the healthcare IT sector, has now become the deepest wound on its financial statements. Due to stalled integration progress and the astronomical reinvestment required for AI-driven healthcare transformation, Cerner is undergoing a complete restructuring.

"Debureaucratization" of management: CEO Safra Catz In an internal meeting, he bluntly stated: "What we need are people who can directly create value from computing power, not people who sit in the middle and report."

The shrinking of global support centers: With the improvement of AI's automated operation and maintenance capabilities, those "human firewalls" that once maintained the operation of massive databases are being ruthlessly replaced by algorithms.

On Monday morning, employees at the Austin headquarters found that the usual aroma of coffee in the office area had disappeared, replaced by a suffocating silence. The once lively technical discussions on Slack were now covered by a screen full of "Good Luck" emojis.

Image source: Internet

Banks cut off lending: Wall Street has removed its lifeline.

If layoffs were an "internal injury," then the collective departure from Wall Street directly severed Oracle's "oxygen supply."

This is an extremely absurd and ironic scene: Oracle is shouting in its press release that "AI orders are exploding," but the bank has locked the safe in the back door.

Credit has plummeted to rock bottom: Several consortiums, including Bank of America (BofA), recently rejected Oracle's application for a multi-billion dollar loan for its "next-generation hyperscale data center." The banks' logic is extremely cold: Oracle's current leverage ratio has already reached the default threshold, and they will not provide even a single dollar of "bridge loan" until they see tangible profits.

The collapse of the debt snowball: Oracle's long-term debt has exceeded [a certain threshold] in order to purchase expensive NVIDIA graphics cards and build data centers. 0 billionCurrently, Oracle's...Credit Default SwapsThe surge in (CDS) rates suggests that investors believe the likelihood of Oracle defaulting is at its highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

Market value evaporated by 460 billion: The capital market has no faith in tears. Since its stock price peaked at the end of 2025, Oracle's stock price has suffered an epic collapse. The shrinking market value not only reduced Larry Ellison's net worth, but also completely blocked the company's path to raising funds through issuing new shares.

The 6 billion "AI gamble": The last heroes pushed to the gambling table

Oracle's current predicament is essentially due to Larry Ellison's "all-in" gamble.

In order to overtake Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft (Azure) in the cloud battle, Oracle has chosen the most treacherous path:By deeply aligning itself with the OpenAI chariot.

Crazy construction: Oracle has pledged to build an epic-scale supercluster for OpenAI, with an estimated investment of up to [amount missing]. US6 billionThis means that Oracle must raise an enormous amount of cash in a very short period of time.

The attempt to "get something for nothing" failed. Ellison had hoped to attract large clients to make advance payments using this "computing power futures" model, but due to the tight global hardware supply chain and the macroeconomic backdrop of the Federal Reserve maintaining high interest rates, interest costs tripled, and the funding gap became an unfillable black hole.

The cold shoulder from major clients: What's even more unsettling for the market is that, due to Oracle's tight cash flow causing project delays, OpenAI has begun to shift some of its core computing needs back to its "real parent company," Microsoft.

Oracle is attempting to trade the livelihoods of 30,000 people and the company's credit for a ticket to the AI era. But the price of this ticket seems to have exceeded the limits of what this long-established giant can afford.

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A letter to international students: When the "retirement haven" collapses

For Chinese students studying abroad, especially those who once considered Oracle their "Dream Offer," the impact of this earthquake was particularly strong.

Say goodbye to the illusion of "retirement in a big company".In Silicon Valley, Oracle was once jokingly referred to as a "retirement home"—the perfect stepping stone for coding practice—due to its slow pace, good benefits, and generous H1B sponsorship. But the reality is that when the giant ship encounters an iceberg, those who are highly paid but on the fringes of non-core business are the first to be thrown aboard.

International students must realize:In this era, there are no stable companies, only constantly evolving individuals.

A sober reflection on the identity dilemmaFor students holding F1-OPT or H1B visas, a layoff of 30,000 people means immense competitive pressure. When traditional giants like Oracle stop sponsoring employees or even lay off workers, it's not just about unemployment, but also the nightmare of a 60-day countdown to leaving the country.This requires everyone to shift from "looking at reputation" to "looking at cash flow" when choosing a career, and to focus on small AI teams with extremely high per capita output and the ability to withstand economic cycles.

Interdisciplinary "dimensional reduction attack"The competition of the future will no longer be about how much SQL you know, but whether you can use AI to restructure the entire business flow. For international students, a single CS skill is no longer a moat; "hybrid talents" with AI-driven thinking and cross-departmental communication skills will be the survivors in this structural rebirth.

Image source: Internet

The other side of the layoff storm: structural rebirth?

This layoff of 30,000 people, on the surface, appears to be a collapse, but in reality, it represents a restructuring of the power order in Silicon Valley.

It reveals a cruel truth:In the second half of digital transformation, it is no longer about people driving machines, but about machines forcing people to change.

Oracle is undergoing the most painful transformation since its inception. It must forcibly transform from a "landlord" selling database software into a capital-intensive company.computing power operators"If it can survive this crisis of banks cutting off loans, it will become the power grid of the AI era; if it cannot, it will become another old god in textbooks, shattered by the tide of the times."

Larry Ellison is still roaring, but reality has already dealt him a heavy blow. For professionals, in this dawn of the AI era, what will eliminate you is not the machines, but yourself who clings to old logic, old skills, and old halos.