Sundar Pichai faces boos, walkout at Stanford graduation ceremony over Google’s Israel, ICE ties

Last weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai faced a minor riot while giving his speech at Stanford University, where he received his degree in materials science and engineering. About 200 students from the graduating class reportedly walked out, while others loudly booed the tech manager.

The focus of the protest was on Google’s defense ties – including Project Nimbus, the controversial $1.2 billion contract, shared with Amazon, to provide cloud and AI services to the Israeli military, as well as his relationship with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency.

Student signs included phrases like “ICE SPIES WITH GOOGLE AI” and “GENOCIDE RUNS ON GOOGLE,” as well as “FREE FREE PALESTINE,” a press release tied to the protest notes. Students also waved Palestinian flags and shouted “free Palestine.” online video of the protest shows.

“We are walking because we refuse to glorify the companies that fuel this violence and exercise our power to choose otherwise,” read a statement related to the protest.

The strike was organized by a number of activist groups on campus, including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid and Tech for Liberation. TechCrunch reached out to Google for comment.

As the war raged in Gaza, Google’s participation in Nimbus sparked protests from both sides inside and outside the company. In 2024, Google laid off 28 employees for protesting the contract even though it went ahead with it suffer from internal discord on the matter ever since. It was also recently criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who accused it and other companies that “choose to look the other way” about Israel’s 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 does limited the Israeli government’s use of its technology an investigation discovered that its cloud services were being used to conduct 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, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish,” adding that it was selfish because the students “ignored the bottom 3 billion people on this planet who could benefit from AI and they worry about their ill-informed selfish self-interest.”

Pichai’s actions at Stanford are part of a broader pattern. Speakers at university graduation ceremonies across the country faced boos as they tried to get students excited about AI. But rarely has student animus been as focused as it has been with Pichai, focused not on the AI ​​hype, but on the specific business decisions made by the company he leads. In general, young people seem to believe that AI is threaten their employment possibilities and can also ruin other parts of society.