Microsoft fires employee protestor who called AI boss a ‘war profiteer’

Microsoft has fired one of the employees who disrupted the company’s 50th-anniversary event. In an email seen by The Verge, Microsoft told Ibtihal Aboussad that their employment has been terminated due to “acts of misconduct.”

Aboussad was one of two protesters that interrupted Microsoft’s 50th anniversary event on Friday by calling Microsoft’s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a “war profiteer” and demanding that Microsoft “stop using AI for genocide in our region.” A second protester, Vaniya Agrawal, interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later on in the event. Both Microsoft employees also sent separate emails to thousands of coworkers, calling on Microsoft to cut its contracts with the Israeli government.

“Earlier today, you interrupted a speech by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman during the Company’s 50th anniversary event in Redmond, Seattle, by yelling and finger-pointing at the CEO before a live audience of thousands of attendees, and making hostile, unprovoked, and highly inappropriate accusations against the CEO, the Company and Microsoft generally,” the email to Ibtihal Aboussad says. “While the CEO remained calm and attempted to de-escalate the matter, your conduct was so aggressive that you had to be escorted out of the room by security.”

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Aboussad was fired today by Microsoft Canada, while Agrawal was dismissed shortly after putting in her two weeks’ notice before the Friday protest, according to an email seen by The Verge. Both protestors are associated with No Azure for Apartheid, a group of Microsoft employees rallying against the company’s contracts with Israel.

“The company has concluded that your misconduct was designed to gain notoriety and cause maximum disruption to this highly anticipated event,” the email to Aboussad reads. “It is also concerning that you have not apologized to the company, and in fact you have shown no remorse for the effect that your actions have had and will have.”

We’ve reached out to Microsoft to comment on the dismissals, but the company didn’t respond in time for publication.

Correction, April 7th: A previous version of the article stated Agrawal was dismissed immediately after submitting her resignation. Agrawal submitted her resignation before the protests and was then dismissed early.