News Desk
A former Google software engineer has been indicted on multiple counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, accused of funneling proprietary artificial intelligence technology to Chinese firms, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
The engineer, Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, 38, is charged with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. The superseding indictment, returned this week, expands on an earlier March 2024 indictment that charged Ding with four counts of trade secret theft.
Prosecutors allege that between May 2022 and May 2023, Ding uploaded more than 1,000 confidential Google files to his personal cloud account.
The stolen data, they say, includes sensitive information about Google’s AI supercomputing infrastructure—technology that underpins the company’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) and Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, as well as software enabling large-scale AI model training.
While still employed at Google, Ding allegedly maintained undisclosed ties with two Chinese technology firms. By mid-2022, he was reportedly in talks to become Chief Technology Officer of a startup based in China. By May 2023, he had launched his own AI company in the country, serving as its CEO.
According to the indictment, Ding was motivated in part by China’s national AI ambitions. Prosecutors cited internal documents in which Ding referenced Chinese government policies supporting AI development. Among them was a PowerPoint presentation circulated within his company, outlining plans to help China build AI computing infrastructure to rival global competitors.
Ding also allegedly applied to a Chinese government-backed talent program in Shanghai, which encourages researchers abroad to transfer knowledge and expertise in exchange for salaries, funding, and other incentives.
“The superseding indictment alleges that Ding intended to benefit the PRC government by stealing trade secrets from Google,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
If convicted, Ding faces severe penalties—up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each trade-secret count, and up to 15 years and a $5 million fine for each economic-espionage count. A federal district court judge will determine his sentence based on statutory guidelines.
The FBI is leading the investigation into the case, which comes amid heightened scrutiny of alleged intellectual property theft linked to China. The U.S. has long accused Beijing of leveraging talent programs and corporate espionage to accelerate its technological advancements, a charge Chinese officials have repeatedly denied.
