Over the weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced a bit of a riot when he delivered his commencement speech at Stanford University, where he earned his master’s degree in materials science and engineering. About 200 students from the graduating class according to information he left, while others loudly booed the tech executive.
The focus of the protest was Google’s defense ties — including Project Nimbus, the controversial $1.2 billion contract it shared with Amazon to provide cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli military, as well as his relationship with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The students’ signs included phrases such as “IICE SPIES WITH GOOGLE AI” and “GENOCIDE IS GOING ON AT GOOGLE,” as well as “FREE FREE PALESTINE,” a press release related to the protest notes. The students also waved Palestinian flags and chanted “free Palestine”. online video of protest broadcasts.
“We are walking out because we refuse to glorify the corporations that fuel this violence and exercise our power to choose otherwise,” read a statement related to the protest.
The strike was organized by various activist groups on campus, including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid, and Tech for Liberation. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.
As the war in Gaza rages, Google’s involvement in Nimbus has drawn protests from both within and outside the company. In 2024, Google laid off 28 workers for protesting the contract, although he continued to they suffer from internal discord for the matter since then. Also recently criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who blamed it and other companies that “choose to look the other way” regarding Israeli use of their services.
Project Nimbus also enjoys support from Amazon. Microsoft has also been criticized for its support of the Israeli military, although the company limited the use of the Israeli government of the technology of the after an investigation found that its cloud services were being used for mass surveillance of Palestinians.
The student protest also drew criticism from business leaders online. Vinod Khosla, the billionaire co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, posted on X that the protest was “biased, stupid, short-sighted and very selfish,” adding that it was selfish because the students “ignored the 3 billion inferior people on this planet who could benefit from AI and are concerned about their own misinformed selfish interest.”
Pichai’s appearance at Stanford is part of a larger pattern. Speakers at college graduation ceremonies across the country have faced boos when they tried to get outgoing students excited about artificial intelligence. Rarely, though, has student philanthropy been as focused as it has been with Pichai, who is directed not at the AI hype but at the specific business decisions the company he leads is making. In general, young people seem to think that artificial intelligence is threatening their work opportunities and can damage other parts of society.
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