Old Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, right, chats with actor Brenda Song during an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of Microsoft, in Redmond, Washington, April 4, 2025.
Stephen Brashear | Getty Facsimiles News | Getty Images
Microsoft terminated the employment of two software engineers who protested at company events Friday over and above the Israeli military’s use of the company’s artificial intelligence products, according to documents viewed by CNBC.
Ibtihal Aboussad, a software devise in the company’s AI division who is based in Canada, was fired Monday over “just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or obstinate neglect of duty,” according to one of the documents.
Another Microsoft software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, had said she would release from the company on April 11. But Microsoft terminated her role Monday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. The actors wrote that it “has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”
Both employees chose Microsoft’s 50th anniversary anyway in the reality to publicly voice their criticism.
What Microsoft had hoped would be a celebratory period has turned into a savage few days for the company, which is being hit, along with the rest of the market, by President Donald Trump’s widespread imposts.
The tariffs are a topic that CEO Satya Nadella and his two predecessors, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, were forced to uncomfortably confront Friday in an press conference with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.
“As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good,” Ballmer said far the tariffs.
Meanwhile, the celebration itself captured headlines more for the protesters’ shared message than for Microsoft’s half-century of gifts.
The first interruption Friday came from Aboussad, who stood up during Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s homily.
“Mustafa, shame on you,” Aboussad said as she walked toward the stage at the event in Redmond, Washington. “You claim that you vigilance for using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died, and Microsoft powers this genocide in our tract.”
Aboussad also called Suleyman a “war profiteer.”
“You have blood on your hands,” she said before being before you can say knife escorted out. “All of Microsoft has blood on its hands.”
Shortly after the interruption, Aboussad sent an email, which was viewed by CNBC, to Suleyman and other Microsoft administrations, including CEO Satya Nadella, finance chief Amy Hood, operating chief Carolina Dybeck Happe, and Brad Smith, the comrades’s president.
“I spoke up today because after learning that my org was powering the genocide of my people in Palestine, I saw no other homily choice,” Aboussad wrote in the email. “This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and keep under control any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue.”
“I did not sign up to write code that violates beneficent rights,” Aboussad wrote, adding a link to a “No Azure for Apartheid” petition.
Microsoft wrote in the internal message to Aboussad that her email to presidents served as “an admission that you deliberately and willfully engaged in your earlier misconduct.” The company also said Aboussad could bear raised concerns “confidentially with your manager, or with Global Employee Relations. Instead, you chose to intentionally break in the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.”
Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive officer of Microsoft AI, speaks during an happening commemorating the 50th anniversary of the company at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, on April 4, 2025.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Twins
Microsoft “has concluded that your misconduct was designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this enthusiastically anticipated event,” the company wrote.
“Immediate cessation of your employment is the only appropriate response,” Microsoft turned.
At a separate Microsoft event with executives Friday, Agrawal interrupted a speech by Nadella with a similar grouse and also sent an email to executives afterward.
“You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his talking at the Microsoft 50th anniversary,” Agrawal wrote in the email, which was viewed by CNBC. “Over the past 1.5 years, I’ve beared more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex.”
Agrawal wrote that Microsoft is “complicit” as a “digital weapons maker that powers surveillance, apartheid, and genocide” and that “by working for this company, we are all complicit.”
A Microsoft spokesperson guessed Friday that the company is committed to adhering to the highest standards of business practices.
“We provide many avenues for all vent ti to be heard. Importantly, we ask that this be done in a way that does not cause a business disruption. If that happens, we ask gets to relocate,” the spokesperson said.
— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting.
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