Kayak protesters disrupt Microsoft Build over Israel cloud contracts
Kayaks turned Fort Mason into a protest stage as Microsoft Build faced demands to cut cloud ties with Israel’s military. The disruption landed before about 2,500 in-person attendees at the waterfront venue.
Kayaks cut across the water off Fort Mason Center and turned Microsoft Build’s final day into a live protest over the company’s cloud contracts with Israel’s military. Members of No Azure for Apartheid and allied demonstrators used the waterfront setting to break through the conference schedule and force the dispute into view at one of San Francisco’s most prominent public venues.
Microsoft had brought Build 2026 to Fort Mason Center for June 2 and 3, with the developer conference running both in person and online and centered on AI and cloud technologies. Organizers said the event drew roughly 2,500 in-person attendees, giving the protest a built-in audience of engineers, executives and developers arriving at a site that sits on San Francisco’s northern waterfront.
The protest was aimed squarely at Azure contracts with the Israeli military. No Azure for Apartheid, a coalition of current and former Microsoft workers and allies, has pressed the company to end its Azure business with the Israeli government and military. The group has repeatedly interrupted Microsoft events over the issue, including previous protests tied to Build in 2025 and a Seattle protest at Microsoft Build that later led to employee terminations.
Microsoft has said the controversy has been reviewed internally and externally. In a May 15, 2025 statement, the company said it had found no evidence to date that Azure and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza. At the same time, Microsoft acknowledged that it provides Israel’s Ministry of Defense with software, professional services, Azure cloud services and Azure AI services, including language translation.
That tension helps explain why Fort Mason mattered. San Francisco has become a pressure point for the tech industry, especially when activists want their message delivered where executives, workers and the public all collide. Fort Mason is not an abstract backdrop. It is a visible civic site, and staging a kayak disruption there turned a corporate conference into a local spectacle with direct ties to the Bay Area’s role as a stage for tech protests.
The action also fit a broader Bay Area strategy: target the venues and employers that give global companies their public face. By disrupting Microsoft Build at Fort Mason, protesters brought an international conflict into a place San Franciscans recognize immediately, making the argument over cloud contracts feel immediate, local and impossible to ignore.
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