Protesters rally outside OpenAI DevDay at San Francisco venue

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Sep 29, 2026, 17:21 UTC

On Tuesday, September 29, 2026, a coalition of more than a dozen organizations staged a protest outside OpenAI's annual DevDay developer conference at Fort Mason in San Francisco. The sponsoring groups included Bay Resistance, Tech Workers Coalition, Service Employees International Union, and San Francisco Rising, spanning labor unions, community organizing outfits, and tech worker advocacy groups. Demonstrators marched in a circle chanting "Sam Altman, get off it, put people over profit" in front of signs spelling out "PEOPLE OVER PROFIT," targeting the CEO by name as the conference got underway inside.

The protest is notable because of the breadth of the coalition that assembled it. Bringing together organized labor, represented by SEIU, alongside tech-specific groups like Tech Workers Coalition and neighborhood-level organizations like San Francisco Rising signals a degree of cross-sector coordination that goes beyond typical tech industry criticism. DevDay is OpenAI's flagship event for developers building on its platforms, making it a high-visibility target for groups who want to associate the company's commercial expansion with broader concerns about labor displacement, profit priorities, and community impact. OpenAI did not issue any public statement in response to the demonstration.

With no published reactions yet from the Pro-AI, Anti-AI, or Middle Ground camps, what each would typically argue can be sketched from their general orientations. The Pro-AI camp would likely frame the protest as mischaracterizing the economic benefits that AI development and developer ecosystems create. The Anti-AI camp would be expected to treat the multi-organization coalition as validation that opposition to companies like OpenAI is moving beyond fringe criticism into mainstream labor and civic politics. The Middle Ground camp would probably argue that the protest reflects legitimate concerns about how AI productivity gains are distributed, while cautioning against blanket opposition to the underlying technology.

The argument to watch is whether this coalition sustains its coordination beyond a single demonstration, and whether any of its member organizations, particularly SEIU, formalize demands directed at OpenAI or the broader AI industry in the weeks following DevDay.