Protesters Greet OpenAI DevDay With 'People Over Profit' Rally

OpenAI's annual DevDay opened on Tuesday to chants of "Sam Altman, get off it, put people over profit," as protesters marched in a circle outside the event venue at San Francisco's Fort Mason.

A series of signs laid out at the entrance spelled out "PEOPLE OVER PROFIT." Protesters carried placards with messages like "People over AI" and handed out flyers to attendees arriving at the developer conference, according to reports from the scene.

More than a dozen organizations sponsored the rally. The list includes Bay Resistance, the Tech Workers Coalition, the Service Employees International Union, San Francisco Rising, and the San Francisco Labor Council — a coalition that spans grassroots activist groups and established labor institutions with significant political weight in the city.

One of the protest's central demands appeared on a large orange sign: "Drop the ICE contract." The message targets OpenAI's reported dealings with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a relationship that has drawn sustained criticism from civil liberties groups and tech workers who argue that commercial AI companies should not supply tools to immigration enforcement agencies. Protesters also referenced OpenAI's data center buildout, an issue that has increasingly put the company at odds with community and environmental groups over land use, water, and energy consumption.

The atmosphere outside the venue mixed earnest political messaging with street theater. Multiple demonstrators dressed in cardboard robot costumes waved cardboard signs, echoing the visual language that has become common at protests targeting AI firms in San Francisco.

The demonstration marks an awkward opening for one of the AI industry's most closely watched events. DevDay is OpenAI's showcase for developers, traditionally a venue for product announcements and tooling updates aimed at the companies building on top of its models. Instead, the first images from this year's event show a circle of chanting protesters and a wall of signs confronting attendees at the door.

The breadth of the sponsoring coalition signals that opposition to OpenAI's business practices is no longer confined to activist fringe groups. The Service Employees International Union represents roughly two million workers, and the San Francisco Labor Council coordinates union activity across the city. Their participation, alongside groups like Bay Resistance and the Tech Workers Coalition — an organization built by tech industry employees themselves — indicates that labor's critique of the AI economy now runs through questions of immigration enforcement contracts and data center expansion, not just job displacement.

The "Drop the ICE contract" demand places OpenAI squarely in an ongoing policy fight over the role of private technology vendors in federal immigration enforcement. Critics of such contracts argue they embed commercial AI providers into government functions that carry direct human consequences, a tension that has grown as the current administration has expanded detention and deportation operations. For OpenAI, which has positioned itself as a company building artificial general intelligence for the benefit of humanity, government enforcement contracts present a direct challenge to that framing.

The protest also lands as scrutiny of AI infrastructure intensifies. Data centers — the physical backbone of large language models — have become flashpoints in communities across the country, with local groups raising concerns about electricity demand, water usage, and the pace of construction. By naming data centers alongside the ICE contract, the protesters connected the two critiques: the social costs of OpenAI's government dealings and the environmental and community costs of its compute buildout.

Tuesday's rally continues a pattern of escalating public pressure on AI companies in San Francisco. OpenAI in particular has faced demonstrations at its offices and events before, but the scale of Tuesday's coalition — more than a dozen sponsoring organizations, including major unions — suggests the movement's organizing capacity is growing alongside the industry it targets.

For the developers, partners, and press arriving at DevDay, the message at the gate was unambiguous. Whether OpenAI responds to the demand to drop its ICE contract, or addresses the concerns around its data center expansion during the event itself, will shape how the company navigs an increasingly organized opposition as it pushes forward with both.