San Francisco — Protesters Rally Outside OpenAI's DevDay Over ICE, Profit

Protesters gathered outside OpenAI's annual DevDay conference in San Francisco on Tuesday, chanting against the company's business practices and its reported ties to federal immigration enforcement, according to The Verge.

The rally formed at the entrance to Fort Mason, the waterfront venue hosting the developer conference, before the event's opening sessions. Demonstrators marched in a circle chanting, "Sam Altman, get off it, put people over profit," while signs behind them spelled out "PEOPLE OVER PROFIT," The Verge reported.

Who organized the protest at Fort Mason?

More than a dozen organizations sponsored the rally, The Verge reported, including Bay Resistance, Tech Workers Coalition, the Service Employees International Union, San Francisco Rising, and the San Francisco Labor Council. The coalition brought together labor unions, tech-industry worker groups, and community organizations under one demonstration outside the conference gates.

What are the protesters demanding from OpenAI?

Signs at the rally targeted several grievances at once. One large orange banner read "Drop the ICE contract," a reference to opposition to any OpenAI work tied to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Other signs read "No killer robots for ICE," "People over AI," "Where is your moral codex?" and "No climate destruction," according to The Verge's on-the-ground account. Several demonstrators wore cardboard robot costumes and carried cardboard scythes as part of the display.

The grievances spanned data-center construction, corporate profit motives, and the company's expanding footprint in government-adjacent work, rather than a single policy demand.

Why has OpenAI's government contracting drawn scrutiny?

The Verge's report frames the demonstration as part of a broader, bipartisan pushback against concentration of power in the AI industry and the absence of dedicated federal regulation for the sector. The report notes that organizations such as QuitGPT have organized boycotts of OpenAI, and that in isolated cases individuals have targeted AI executives at their homes — incidents cited by The Verge as evidence of how heated the public reaction to the industry has become.

The piece also situates the protest inside a period of declining public trust in AI companies generally, though it does not cite a specific survey or trust figure tied to the demonstration.

How did OpenAI respond to the demonstration?

The Verge's dispatch, filed as DevDay's opening sessions were getting underway, does not include a statement from OpenAI addressing the protest or the ICE contract allegation directly. The report focuses on the scene outside the venue rather than the company's programming inside it.

Protest by the numbers

• 12+ — organizations that sponsored Tuesday's rally outside DevDay, per The Verge.
• 5 — named labor and advocacy groups identified in the report: Bay Resistance, Tech Workers Coalition, SEIU, San Francisco Rising, and the San Francisco Labor Council.

What to watch

• Whether OpenAI issues a public response to the "Drop the ICE contract" demand raised outside DevDay.
• Whether QuitGPT or allied groups announce further coordinated actions tied to the company's contracting work.
• Any statements from Immigration and Customs Enforcement or OpenAI confirming or denying a contractual relationship.
• Coverage of DevDay's actual product announcements, which The Verge is tracking separately as part of its ongoing DevDay 2026 event log.

The demonstration unfolded as a sideline to DevDay's substantive agenda, but it added a visible counterpoint to a conference built around showcasing OpenAI's commercial momentum. Fort Mason, a former U.S. Army post turned event space on San Francisco's northern waterfront, has hosted OpenAI's developer conference in past years without comparable protest activity reaching the scale described by The Verge on Tuesday.

The report does not specify a total headcount for the rally, nor does it detail whether police or venue security intervened. It also does not confirm the underlying claim about an ICE contract independently — the assertion is presented as the protesters' stated grievance rather than a confirmed fact, and readers should treat the "Drop the ICE contract" demand as an allegation pending any company or agency confirmation.

For readers tracking the broader AI-regulation debate, the episode adds to a string of 2026 flashpoints over how fast AI firms are scaling data-center and government work relative to public oversight — a tension The Verge's report ties explicitly to the bipartisan character of Tuesday's coalition.

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