Stanford Graduates Walk Out on Pichai Over Israel Cloud Deal

Graduates walked out of Stanford Stadium on June 14 as Sundar Pichai opened the university’s 2026 commencement. The action targeted Google’s contract with the Israeli government while Pichai delivered his remarks.

Project Nimbus is a roughly $1.2 billion cloud agreement announced in April 2021. The initial term runs for seven years and provides cloud and artificial intelligence services for government, defense and security users. The contract involves Google and Amazon.

Organizers from Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine had pledged the walkout weeks before the ceremony and directed the protest at Project Nimbus rather than at concerns about automation or job losses. Protesters argue the agreement supports surveillance and military operations in Gaza.

Pichai, a Stanford alumnus, did not address artificial intelligence during his speech. In an excerpt from his remarks, Pichai joked, “It is the last two letters of my last name.” He urged graduates to choose optimism, to work on difficult problems and to follow what excites them, and he referenced his arrival from Chennai and his early work on the Chrome browser.

Other technology leaders this spring faced boos at university graduations when they discussed AI and its impact on jobs. Pichai has spent the past year promoting personalized AI agents and Google’s Gemini-powered tools, and the Project Nimbus contract explicitly covers cloud and AI services for Israeli government agencies.

Google has faced internal and external backlash over Nimbus. In 2024 the company fired more than two dozen employees who protested the contract, a move that helped fuel an activist campaign opposing tech companies’ work for the Israeli government. The dispute has prompted scrutiny of Google’s government AI contracts and been noted by investors concerned about Alphabet’s AI spending.

The commencement continued with Pichai delivering guidance to graduates while protesters focused on the cloud deal. The walkout brought attention to Project Nimbus at a high-profile campus event.