Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai gave a graduation speech at Stanford University, where he avoided mentioning AI, instead focusing on life guidance and lessons for the new graduates. His speech was disrupted by a walk-out of around 200 students protesting Google's role in the Israel-Palestine conflict, with smaller groups waving banners and Palestinian flags and blowing whistles before leaving mid-speech. The controversy stems from Google's $1.2 billion cloud-computing deal with the Israeli government known as Project Nimbus, which led to employee protests in 2022. Pichai briefly hinted at AI without naming it, noting advice on what not to say, but stated the topic was "truly immaterial" to his message. He outlined three "simple filters": "choose optimism," "gravitate towards working on hard things" (citing building the Chrome browser), and "when all else is equal, do the thing that excites you." This contrasted with predecessor Eric Schmidt's recent University of Arizona commencement speech, where he declared "AI is going to touch everything" and was booed by attendees.