San Francisco, January 30, 2026, 05:43 PST
- A federal jury convicted ex-Google engineer Linwei Ding on 14 counts, including economic espionage, prosecutors said
- Authorities say he took more than 2,000 pages of confidential AI chip and data-center information and moved it to personal accounts
- The case lands amid a U.S. push to curb sensitive technology theft linked to China, with sentencing still ahead
A federal jury in San Francisco convicted former Google engineer Linwei Ding on Thursday of stealing the company’s artificial intelligence trade secrets to help China-linked firms, U.S. prosecutors said. Ding, 38, was found guilty of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets after an 11-day trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said. Justice
The verdict hits as Big Tech pours money into AI systems that depend on scarce, high-value know-how: chips, networking gear and the software that ties it together. In court terms, a “trade secret” is confidential business information that can give a company an edge; “economic espionage” is a U.S. charge for stealing those secrets to benefit a foreign government.
Prosecutors framed the case as part of a wider fight over who controls advanced computing, which the U.S. increasingly treats as both a commercial prize and a national security issue. The Justice Department has said it set up a multi-agency effort in 2023 to target theft of what it calls “disruptive” technologies.
At trial, prosecutors said Ding took information about the hardware and software used to run Google’s supercomputing data centers, the systems that train “large AI models” — the data-hungry programs behind modern chatbots and image generators. They said the material described how Google builds and runs the machinery that makes those models possible.
The stolen material included details on Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips, or TPUs — in-house processors tuned for AI — and on graphics processing unit, or GPU, systems used for heavy computing, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. It also covered software that coordinates thousands of chips into an AI “supercomputer” and a custom “SmartNIC,” a network interface card designed to move data quickly inside those systems, prosecutors said.
Evidence showed Ding uploaded more than 2,000 pages of confidential files from Google’s network to a personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and April 2023, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. In December 2023, less than two weeks before he resigned, he downloaded the material to a personal computer, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Ding secretly built ties to two China-based technology companies while still employed by Google. They said he discussed becoming chief technology officer of one early-stage company in mid-2022, then moved to set up his own AI and machine-learning company in China in early 2023, acting as its CEO.
In statements to potential investors, Ding claimed he could build an AI supercomputer by copying and modifying Google’s technology, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. Prosecutors also pointed to his application for a Shanghai government-backed “talent plan,” where he wrote he planned to help China build computing infrastructure “on par with the international level,” according to the office.
Some of the material involved chip designs that prosecutors said were meant to help Google compete with cloud rivals Amazon and Microsoft, both of which design their own chips, and to cut Google’s reliance on Nvidia, whose processors dominate much of today’s AI computing. Reuters
Ding was indicted in March 2024, and a superseding indictment returned in February 2025 expanded the case into seven categories of alleged trade secrets, prosecutors said. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria presided over the trial, and Ding is due back in court for a status conference on Feb. 3, the Justice Department said.
Court filings cited by local media said Google detected the uploads after learning Ding had presented himself as CEO of one of the China-based companies at an investor conference in Beijing. The filing said Ding later booked a one-way flight to Beijing, and the FBI searched his home in early January 2024; he was arrested about two months later, the report said. Cbsnews
“Silicon Valley is at the forefront of artificial intelligence innovation,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian said in a statement, adding that the verdict sent a message “that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished.” FBI Special Agent in Charge Sanjay Virmani said the theft “threatens our technological edge and economic competitiveness,” and called the verdict a warning that federal law will be enforced to protect sensitive U.S. technology.
But the biggest unknown is what happens at sentencing. Prosecutors said each economic espionage count carries a maximum 15-year prison term, while each trade secret count carries up to 10 years, and the judge will weigh federal sentencing guidelines before imposing any penalty; Ding’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters reported. Google was not charged and has said it cooperated with law enforcement, according to Reuters.
