Project Nimbus Project Nimbus is a long-term cloud computin
Project Nimbus
Project Nimbus is a long-term cloud computing and AI contract under which Google and Amazon provide infrastructure and services to the Israel government, including its defence establishment. Announced in 2021 and valued at roughly $1.2 billion, it has become a major flashpoint in debates about tech, war, and human rights.
Key facts
* Nature of deal: Multiyear cloud and AI services contract
* Parties: Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services with Government of Israel
* Estimated value: About $1.2 billion over the term
* Announced: Tender result public in April–May 2021
* Core controversy: Potential enabling of surveillance and military operations in occupied Palestinian territories
What the contract does
Nimbus is designed to move large parts of Israel’s government IT stack to commercial cloud platforms. Officially, it is described as a four-phase programme: building local cloud infrastructure, setting policy, migrating workloads, and then optimising operations.
The contract covers data storage, compute, AI and machine learning tools, and analytics. Google and Amazon are required to host data in local Israeli cloud regions and, crucially, are contractually barred from refusing service to any specific government entity, including the military.
Corporate framing vs. critics’ concerns
Google publicly frames Nimbus as focused on civilian workloads such as finance, healthcare, transport, and education, and says it is not intended for “highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads” or weapons uses.
However, leaked documents and independent reporting indicate that the provided cloud and AI capabilities—like large-scale data storage, image/video analysis, and model-development tools—are available to Israeli security agencies and could be used for facial recognition, object tracking, and other surveillance or targeting applications. Google’s own internal risk assessments reportedly warned about potential human-rights impacts before the deal was signed.
Labour, activism, and backlash
Project Nimbus triggered significant dissent inside both tech companies. In 2021, anonymous Google and Amazon workers published an open letter under the banner No Tech for Apartheid, urging cancellation of the contract.
Since then, there have been repeated employee protests, shareholder resolutions, and walkouts over Nimbus and its role in Israel’s warfare in Gaza. These escalated in 2024, when sit-ins at Google offices led to the firing of dozens of workers, and the campaign became a touchpoint for broader organising about tech’s role in military and surveillance systems.
Legal and governance issues
Documents obtained by journalists and advocates suggest the contract includes unusual terms, such as mechanisms to secretly alert Israel if foreign governments seek access to Nimbus-hosted data, and explicit clauses preventing the providers from joining boycotts against Israeli state entities.
Civil-society groups and some UN experts now cite Nimbus as an example of corporate complicity in alleged human-rights violations linked to the Gaza war, especially around mass surveillance, targeting, and settlement expansion in the occupied territories.
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