Daijiworld Media Network - San Francisco
San Francisco, Jan 30: A former Google software engineer has been convicted by a federal jury in San Francisco for stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets from the US tech giant to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Thursday.
Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese national, was found guilty after an 11-day trial of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. Prosecutors said Ding stole thousands of pages of confidential information related to Google’s advanced AI technologies.
Each economic espionage charge carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison and a fine of up to $5 million, while each trade secrets charge carries a maximum 10-year prison term and a $250,000 fine. Ding is scheduled to appear at a status conference on February 3, according to the DOJ.
Ding was initially indicted in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets. A superseding indictment filed in February expanded the charges significantly. His attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
According to prosecutors, Ding stole sensitive information about the hardware infrastructure and software platforms used by Google’s supercomputing data centres to train large AI models. Some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints were designed to give Google, owned by Alphabet, a competitive edge over rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft, and to reduce its dependence on Nvidia chips.
The DOJ said Ding joined Google in May 2019 and began stealing confidential data around three years later, when he was being courted by an early-stage Chinese technology company. The case was coordinated through the interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force, created by the Biden administration in 2023 to counter national security threats involving critical technologies.
Google was not charged in the case and has said it cooperated fully with law enforcement. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.