Wilmington, Delaware, Jan 29 - A federal jury in San Francisco on Thursday returned guilty verdicts against Linwei Ding, a former software engineer at Google, finding him responsible for stealing trade secrets and committing economic espionage to benefit two Chinese companies he was covertly working for, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
Ding, 38, a Chinese national, was convicted after an 11-day trial on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. Prosecutors said he took thousands of pages of confidential material from Google. Each count of economic espionage carries a maximum prison sentence of 15 years and a potential $5 million fine; each theft of trade secrets count carries a maximum 10-year term and a $250,000 fine.
The Justice Department said Ding is scheduled to appear at a status conference on February 3. An attorney for Ding, who is also known as Leon Ding, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ding was first indicted in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets, and prosecutors later expanded the case with a superseding indictment in February. The prosecution of Ding was handled in coordination with an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force, created in 2023 by the Biden administration.
According to prosecutors, the materials Ding stole included information about the hardware infrastructure and the software platform Google uses to enable its supercomputing data centers to train large AI models. Investigators also said some of the purloined documents contained chip blueprints that were described as intended to help Google maintain an edge over cloud rivals such as Amazon.com and Microsoft - companies that design their own processors - and to reduce dependence on chips from Nvidia.
Prosecutors said Ding joined Google in May 2019 and began stealing material three years later, at a time when he was being courted to join an early-stage Chinese technology company. Google itself was not charged in the case and has said it cooperated with law enforcement. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Summary
A San Francisco federal jury found Linwei Ding guilty on multiple counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets after an 11-day trial. The charges stem from allegations he stole thousands of pages of confidential information from Google to benefit two Chinese companies. The stolen material reportedly covered the hardware and software underpinning Google's AI model training infrastructure and chip designs tied to the company's cloud computing strategy.
Key points
- Legal outcome - Ding convicted on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets after an 11-day trial; substantial maximum penalties apply.
- Scope of alleged theft - Prosecutors say stolen files included hardware infrastructure, software platform details for training large AI models, and chip blueprints related to cloud competitiveness.
- Sectors affected - Cloud computing, AI infrastructure, and semiconductor supply chains are implicated by the nature of the information described by prosecutors.
Risks and uncertainties
- Criminal penalties - Ding faces the possibility of decades in prison and multimillion-dollar fines if convicted on the maximum terms stated in the charges.
- Ongoing legal process - The case was expanded by a superseding indictment in February, and Ding is scheduled for a status conference on February 3, indicating unresolved procedural steps.
- Intellectual property exposure - Prosecutors allege the theft included blueprints and infrastructure details that could affect competitive positions within cloud services and chip reliance.