Oracle was founded in 1977 by now-billionaire Larry Elison and two other people. Today, Larry Ellison is one of the most powerful people in the world, basically bank-rolling Donald Trump and his racist agenda (which is ironic because Ellison himself married a Chinese woman 47 years younger than him) and moving to own big media houses like Paramount Skydance and Warner Brothers. And TikTok.

Anyway, his company Oracle have spent billions of dollars on AI related expansion in the last few years. And in the last few months, they have been laying people off. In April this year, Oracle laid off 30,000 people worldwide – including 12,000 people in India. Earlier this month, Oracle was reportedly preparing to lay off another 3,000 people in India. This week, the layoffs happened.

Sources say some 6,000 people were laid off from Oracle in India (although the company did not reveal how many) – without prior notice. These are clearly unfair dismissals. This las led to some affected employees actually staging peaceful protests outside the Oracle campus in Hyderabad (look up “The Oracle Files” on Instagram). One demonstrator even reported receiving intimidation threats from Oracle and sought police protection. People went on hunger strikes, at first protesting the company but now also protesting the Government, who has sadly done little to make sure these laid off employees get proper severance payment and support.

Way back when I used to write blog posts, I wrote this piece which is more relevant than ever today.

What makes this more sad is that this round of layoffs are from the data center support and software developers, which are not really fully replaced by AI yet.

And these layoffs came despite the company reported a 121% increase in profit this quarter compared with the same quarter last year.

It’s hard to say what is the worst thing about these layoffs – whether it’s Larry Ellison being a billionaire jerk, or that the employees were not given notice, are not getting the required severance support, the Government failing to step in, or all of the above. But one of the worst parts definitely is that thousands of companies in India still use – and will still use – the Oracle ERP suite of tools. And that’s because for a large or mid-size company, it’s still too difficult and expensive to switch to a new ERP like SAP or Zoho.

For companies like Oracle, normally I would advocate for boycotts. The problem with this, as stated above, is that the vast majority of you will probably have never used Oracle ERP. But its enterprise customers – which make up almost all their customer base – will keep coming back. But you could show your suipport to the demonstraors by following them on Instagram.

If you have been laid off from Oracle, please contact me. The best I can do is publish some facts. And listen.

CMF is Now an Indian Brand

In other more positive news, Nothing is separating its CMF sub-brand into an independent Indian entity, with CEO Carl Pei stating the strategy focuses on establishing a worldwide consumer electronics brand originating from India.

CMF will be predominantly Indian-owned, based in India, and operate with its own dedicated team and research and development facilities. Nothing will maintain an ownership share and remain as a shareholder and collaborator.

This decision expands upon Nothing’s 2025 alliance with Optiemus Infracom, where both organizations pledged more than $100 million across three years and intended to generate over 1,800 employment opportunities in India. CMF is also aiming for 100 million handset sales and intends to broaden its portfolio beyond smartphones to include IoT devices and additional product lines.

Btw, I bought my dad the Nothing Phone 4b recently. Not in partnership with Nothing or anything. Just…. something I did. That’s all.

Headlines

• Adidas lays off 350 people – about 50% of Gurugram “engineering” workforce. Adidas is disputing… reports about the number of people laid off. These are mostly developers and tech related roles.
• Four US consumers have sued Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google, alleging that the companies coordinated efforts to slow the development of competing AI products. The lawsuit was filed on September 18 in the US District Court for the Northern District of California.
• In July, three cybersecurity researchers used Claude to hack into OpenAI’s systems. It was an authorised security test in which the researchers used Claude to help exploit a software flaw, eventually gaining access to OpenAI employee accounts and a way into the company’s private GitHub environment. Simply put, the researchers were looking for security flaws in OpenAI’s systems as part of its bug-bounty programme. They found one and used Claude to help exploit it. The three researchers were Harsh Jaiswal, Mohan Pedhapati and Rahul Maini, from cybersecurity startup Hacktron AI.
• In nearly 30 per cent of companies, productivity fell after teams began using agentic artificial intelligence tools, revealing operational hurdles amid the rapid enterprise adoption of autonomous coding systems, according to McKinsey’s Technology Trends Outlook 2026.
• boAt has debuted “Crest AI”, which is an AI assistant built on Gemini. Kind of like Alexa on your headphones.
• IPO bandwagon: Kuku FM.
• Airtel users will get Apple TV, Apple Arcade and iCloud+ for free. Or so the company claims. I haven’t seen it yet on my Airtel app.
• Blink digital, a media company, tries to get 1000 crores from Meta in India through the Bombay high court. The agency claims that Meta blocked or took down some of their pages, and this resulted in business losses. The Court first told the agency to explain how they arrived at the 1000 crore claim.
• Smartphone screen protectors fall under BSI, which means that screen protectors sold in India will have to meet a minimum set of quality requirements.
• Jio Platforms IPO is confirmed to take place in November 2026. Just after Diwali.

Meta’s Musings

And finally, Meta has launched yet another hardware device, the Meta Muse Charm. A camera-less “AI Personal Assistant” device that runs on 5G but is not a phone. Meta also announced a bunch of things at their Meta Connect event this week, including a version of the Meta glasses without a camera. This is clearly Meta reacting to the backlash around the privacy nightmare that is the Meta Rayban glasses, and with some countries actually moving to ban these glasses altogether.

What is very clear is that Meta wants most people to forget what they feel about Mark Zuckerberg and the company, i.e. that it is an organisation that makes products that are deliberately addictive, few guardrails, causes harm to teenagers, privacy nightmares and literally influenced the election of what people say is the worst leader in the so-called free world. And don’t you forget that.

Book Recommendation of The Week

Okay, normally I recommend a tech(ish) buy for the week, but based on feedback (which I love, keep them coming) I’m going to recommend books till Diwali this year. And not e-readers. Physical, page turning books that I have read and loved. Across genres.

This week’s recommendation is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche. Fantastic author. Aside from some very intense novels, she has become one of my favourite authors because she doesn’t care about “westernising” her name. Proud.