Ex-Google Engineer Faces Decades In Prison After Jury Finds He Stole AI Secrets For China

A federal jury in San Francisco convicted a former Alphabet Inc.-owned (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google software engineer this week for stealing sensitive artificial intelligence trade secrets.

Jury Delivers Landmark AI Espionage Verdict

Jurors found Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets on Thursday, according to court records.

Ding, 38, was accused of stealing confidential AI-related information from Google to benefit the People's Republic of China.

The case marks the first U.S. conviction tied specifically to AI economic espionage, the Department of Justice said.

Thousands Of Pages Of Google AI Secrets Stolen

Prosecutors said Ding stole more than 2,000 pages of internal Google documents between May 2022 and April 2023, uploading them to his personal cloud account.

At the time, Ding was affiliated with two China-based technology companies and was working to launch his own firm.

The stolen material included detailed information about Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit chips, GPU-based AI systems, and SmartNIC networking technology, which enables high-speed communication across AI supercomputers and cloud infrastructure.

FBI Warns Of High-Stakes AI Arms Race

"In today's high-stakes race to dominate the field of artificial intelligence, Linwei Ding betrayed both the U.S. and his employer," said Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director at the FBI, calling the verdict a warning to those who steal critical technologies.

The trial was overseen by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria and lasted 11 days. Ding was initially indicted in 2024.

Defense Rejected, Sentencing Ahead

Ding's attorney argued Google failed to adequately protect the information, claiming it was widely accessible internally, according to Courthouse News Service.

Ding faces up to 10 years in prison per trade secret count and 15 years per economic espionage count. His next court appearance is scheduled for Tuesday.

Google said the verdict reinforces the serious consequences of trade secret theft.

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