Microsoft fires engineers who protested during anniversary celebration

Microsoft terminated the two software engineers who protested at company events on Friday over the Israeli military’s use of the company’s artificial intelligence products, according to documents viewed by CNBC.

Ibtihal Aboussad, a software engineer in the company’s AI division who is based in Canada, was fired on Monday over “just cause, wilful misconduct, disobedience or wilful neglect of duty,” according to one of the documents.

Another Microsoft software engineer, Vaniya Agrawal, had said she would resign from the company on Friday, April 11. But Microsoft terminated her role on Monday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. The company wrote that it “has decided to make your resignation immediately effective today.”

Both employees chose Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event to publicly voice their criticism. What Microsoft had hoped would be a celebratory period has turned into a brutal few days for the company, which is being hit, along with the rest of the market, by President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs. It’s a topic that CEO Satya Nadella and his two predecessors, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, were forced to uncomfortably confront on Friday in an interview with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin.

“As a Microsoft shareholder, this kind of thing is not good,” Ballmer said, about the tariffs.

Meanwhile, the celebration itself captured headlines more for the protesters’ shared message than for Microsoft’s half-century of accomplishments.

Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment.

The first interruption on Friday came from Aboussad, who stood up during Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s speech.

“Mustafa, shame on you,” Aboussad said as she walked towards the stage at the event in Redmond, Washington. “You claim that you care 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 region.”

Aboussad also called Suleyman a “war profiteer.”

“You have blood on your hands,” she said before being swiftly 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 executives, including CEO Satya Nadella, finance chief Amy Hood, operating chief Carolina Dybeck Happe and Brad Smith, the company’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 moral choice,” Aboussad wrote in the email. “This is especially true when I’ve witnessed how Microsoft has tried to quell and suppress any dissent from my coworkers who tried to raise this issue.”

Aboussad continued in the email, “I did not sign up to write code that violates human rights,” adding a link to a “No Azure for Apartheid” petition.

Microsoft wrote in the internal message that Aboussad’s email to executives served as “an admission that you deliberately and willfully engaged in your earlier misconduct.” The company also said that Abousssad could have raised concerns “confidentially with your manager, or with Global Employee Relations. Instead, you chose to intentionally disrupt the speech of Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman.”

The document went on to say that Microsoft “has concluded that your misconduct was designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event.”

“Immediate cessation of your employment is the only appropriate response,” Microsoft wrote.

At a separate Microsoft event with executives on Friday, Agrawal interrupted a speech from Nadella with a similar protest and sent an email to executives afterward.

“You may have seen me stand up earlier today to call out Satya during his speech at the Microsoft 50th anniversary,” Agrawal wrote in the email, which was viewed by CNBC, on Friday. “Over the past 1.5 years, I’ve grown more aware of Microsoft’s growing role in the military-industrial complex.”

Agrawal wrote that Microsoft is “complicit” as a “digital weapons manufacturer that powers surveillance, apartheid, and genocide,” adding that “by working for this company, we are all complicit.”

A Microsoft spokesperson said Friday that the company is committed to adhering to the highest standards of business practices.

“We provide many avenues for all voices 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 participants to relocate,” the spokesperson said.

—CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed reporting.

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