A federal jury has found Linwei Ding, a former Google engineer, guilty on multiple charges, including seven counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. The conviction, announced by the Department of Justice on Thursday, follows Ding’s actions in which he allegedly took over 2,000 confidential documents related to artificial intelligence technologies to benefit a startup in China.
Ding, 38, was indicted in March 2024 for transferring sensitive information from Google’s network to his personal Google Cloud account. The documents included critical details about the architecture of Google’s AI systems, including proprietary software and hardware designs essential for their supercomputing infrastructure. The theft occurred between May 2022 and April 2023, with Ding downloading the information shortly before his resignation in December 2023.
During his tenure at Google, which began in 2019, Ding was reportedly in talks to become the Chief Technology Officer for a Chinese tech firm and later started his own company, Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies Co., in 2023. U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian emphasized the importance of protecting American intellectual property in light of such breaches.