Stanford students walk out of graduation as Google CEO Sundar Pichai speaks, protesting Israel cloud contract

Jun 15, 2026

Around 200 Stanford students walked out of their graduation as Google CEO Sundar Pichai spoke, protesting the company's $1.2 billion 'Project Nimbus' cloud and AI contract with Israel. Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine, the protest is part of a wider movement on U.S. campuses. Protesters held an alternative ceremony while Pichai delivered a speech that avoided controversial topics like AI.

Stanford graduation walkout

▪Around 200 Stanford University students walked out of their graduation ceremony on June 14, 2026, as Google CEO Sundar Pichai began his speech.
▪Protesting students carried Palestinian flags and banners with slogans like "Genocide Runs on Google" and "ICE spies with Google AI."
▪As they marched out of the stadium, some students chanted "free, free Palestine."
▪The walkout was organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and other groups.

Project Nimbus contract

▪Critics allege Project Nimbus provides AI-powered data harvesting used for facial recognition and object tracking.
▪The protest targeted Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion cloud computing and AI contract signed in 2021 between Google, Amazon, and the Israeli government.
▪Google states the Project Nimbus contract is not for highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.
▪In early 2026, Google fired approximately 50 employees who participated in sit-in protests against the Project Nimbus deal.
▪The protest also cited Google's alleged collaboration with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and companies like Palantir.

Campus pro-Palestinian protest movement

▪The walkout is part of a broader movement of pro-Palestinian activism on U.S. college campuses since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
▪This was the third consecutive year that activist groups organized a walkout during Stanford's commencement to support Palestine.
▪The Crowd Counting Consortium has recorded over 3,700 days of protest activity across more than 500 schools, with over 3,000 arrests nationwide.

AI-themed graduation speech backlash

▪Pichai's remarks focused on optimism, tackling difficult challenges, and pursuing work that excites the graduates.
▪Sundar Pichai's speech largely avoided the topic of AI, a subject that has drawn boos for other tech-affiliated speakers at 2026 graduations.
▪Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed by students at the University of Arizona in May 2026 when he spoke about the rise of AI.

Alternative People's Commencement ceremony

▪Mahmoud Khalil was arrested in March 2025 for his participation in a 2024 Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University.
▪A featured speaker at the alternative event was Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist fighting deportation by the Trump administration.
▪Students who walked out attended an alternative "People's Commencement" organized by the Stanford chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.