Sundar Pichai booed as hundreds walk out of Stanford graduation over Gaza protests

Stanford University’s 2026 commencement ceremony was disrupted on Sunday when hundreds of graduating students staged a coordinated walkout and jeered as Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage to deliver the keynote address.

As Pichai, a Stanford alumnus, was introduced at Stanford Stadium, an estimated 200 students stood up, unveiled Palestinian flags, blew whistles, and chanted in protest. Many wore traditional keffiyehs over their graduation gowns as they exited the stadium mid-speech.

Protest over Project Nimbus

The protest, organised by campus groups including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid, targeted Google’s corporate contracts. Specifically, protesters aimed their ire at Project Nimbus, a controversial $1.2 billion cloud-computing and artificial intelligence contract signed in 2021 by Google and Amazon to provide services to the Israeli government and military. Activists allege the technology is used for surveillance and military operations in Gaza.

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The AI-free speech

While sections of the stadium cleared out, Pichai delivered his address. Facing a campus climate already anxious over AI-driven tech layoffs and economic uncertainty, the Alphabet chief executive chose to omit any explicit mention of artificial intelligence from his remarks.

The omission comes after a string of public relation stumbles for tech leaders this graduation season. Earlier this year, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and other industry executives faced heavy booing at various universities for leaning into pro-AI rhetoric amid a historical high in recent-graduate unemployment.

Acknowledging the elephant in the room with a brief bit of self-deprecation, Pichai joked about the immense pressure he felt to speak on the topic.

“People thought it would be really difficult for me; it is the last two letters of my last name, after all,” Pichai said, referring to the "AI" in Pichai.

He urged the Class of 2026 to ignore the noise of rapid technological shifts, encouraging them instead to "choose optimism, work on hard things, and do what excites you."

Stanford University administration has not yet released a formal statement regarding disciplinary actions for the disrupting students, while Google has pointed inquiries to the published transcript of Pichai's speech on its corporate blog.