Microsoft had police remove protesters who stormed office over work with Israeli military

Published

3 months ago

August 27, 2025

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Brad Smith, president of Microsoft Corp., at the Web Summit conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on Wednesday, May 28, 2025. The annual conference gathers key industry figures in technology.

James MacDonald | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft asked police to remove people who improperly entered a building at its headquarters in protest of the Israeli military’s alleged use of the company’s software as part of the invasion of Gaza.

On Tuesday, current and former Microsoft employees affiliated with the group No Azure for Apartheid started protesting inside a building on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Washington, and gained entry into the office of Brad Smith, the company’s president. The protesters delivered a court summons notice at his office, according to a statement from the group.

“Obviously, when seven folks do as they did today — storm a building, occupy an office, block other people out of the office, plant listening devices, even in crude form, in the form of telephones, cell phones hidden under couches and behind books — that’s not OK,” Smith told reporters during a briefing.

“When they’re asked to leave and they refuse, that’s not OK. That’s why for those seven folks, the Redmond police literally had to take them out of the building.”

Smith said that out of the seven people who entered his office, two were employees.

While the company doesn’t retaliate against employees who express their views, Smith said, it’s different if they make threats. Microsoft will look at whether to discipline the employees who participated in the protest, Smith said.

Once inside Microsoft’s building 34, the No Azure For Apartheid protesters demanded that the company cut its ties with Israel and ask for an end to the country’s alleged genocide.

Tech’s megacap companies are doing more work with defense agencies, particularly as demand increases for advanced artificial intelligence technologies. Many of those activities were already controversial, but the issue has gotten more intense as Israel has escalated its military offensive in Gaza.

Last year Google fired 28 employees after some trespassed at the company’s facilities. Some employees gained access to the office of Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google’s cloud unit, which had a contract with Israel’s government.

No Azure for Apartheid has held a series of actions this year, including at Microsoft’s Build developer conference and at a celebration of the company’s 50th anniversary. A Microsoft director reached out to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as the protests continued, Bloomberg reported earlier on Tuesday.

Last week, No Azure For Apartheid mounted protests around the company’s campus, leading to 20 arrests in one day. Of the 20, 16 have never worked at Microsoft, Smith said.

The Guardian reported earlier this month that Israel’s military used Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure to store Palestinians’ phone calls, leading the company to authorize a third-party investigation into whether Israel has drawn on the company’s technology for surveillance.

“I think the responsible step from us is clear in this kind of situation: to go investigate and get to the truth of how our services are being used,” Smith said on Tuesday.

Most of Microsoft’s work with the Israeli Defense Force involves cybersecurity for Israel, he said. He added that the company cares “deeply” about the people in Israel who died from the terrorist attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and the hostages who were taken, as well as the tens of thousands of civilians in Gaza who have died since from the war.

Microsoft intends to provide technology in an ethical way, Smith said.

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Technology

Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup’s robots could ‘fracture a human skull’

Published

14 hours ago

November 21, 2025

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$Figure AI sued by whistleblower who warned that startup's robots could 'fracture a human skull'$

Startup Figure AI is developing general-purpose humanoid robots.

Figure AI

Figure AI, an Nvidia-backed developer of humanoid robots, was sued by the startup’s former head of product safety who alleged that he was wrongfully terminated after warning top executives that the company’s robots “were powerful enough to fracture a human skull.”

Robert Gruendel, a principal robotic safety engineer, is the plaintiff in the suit filed Friday in a federal court in the Northern District of California. Gruendel’s attorneys describe their client as a whistleblower who was fired in September, days after lodging his “most direct and documented safety complaints.”

The suit lands two months after Figure was valued at $39 billion in a funding round led by Parkway Venture Capital. That’s a 15-fold increase in valuation from early 2024, when the company raised a round from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nvidia, and Microsoft.

In the complaint, Gruendel’s lawyers say the plaintiff warned Figure CEO Brett Adcock and Kyle Edelberg, chief engineer, about the robot’s lethal capabilities, and said one “had already carved a ¼-inch gash into a steel refrigerator door during a malfunction.”

The complaint also says Gruendel warned company leaders not to “downgrade” a “safety road map” that he had been asked to present to two prospective investors who ended up funding the company.

Gruendel worried that a “product safety plan which contributed to their decision to invest” had been “gutted” the same month Figure closed the investment round, a move that “could be interpreted as fraudulent,” the suit says.

The plaintiff’s concerns were “treated as obstacles, not obligations,” and the company cited a “vague ‘change in business direction’ as the pretext” for his termination, according to the suit.

Gruendel is seeking economic, compensatory and punitive damages and demanding a jury trial.

Figure didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did attorneys for Gruendel.

The humanoid robot market remains nascent today, with companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics pursuing futuristic offerings, alongside Figure, while China’s Unitree Robotics is preparing for an IPO. Morgan Stanley said in a report in May that adoption is “likely to accelerate in the 2030s” and could top $5 trillion by 2050.

Read the filing here: