US tech companies have eliminated close to 140,000 jobs since January, accounting for more than a third of every layoff announced nationwide, per an FT review of corporate filings and Challenger data. Roughly 50,000 of those came from Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, and Meta, about 6% of their combined corporate staff. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are meanwhile budgeting $725B for data centers this year, with Oracle putting up another $70B, and RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria ties the cuts directly to that spending as both a correction for pandemic-era hiring and a way to free capital for AI. Oracle finished its fiscal year down 21,000 people and took an S&P downgrade to one notch above junk. Microsoft cut 4,800 roles this month, mostly inside Xbox, three years after paying $75B for Activision Blizzard.
