Former Google engineer found guilty of espionage and theft of AI tech
Former Google engineer found guilty of espionage and theft of AI tech
Publish Date: 2026-01-30 14:04:00
Source Domain: www.cnbc.com
- Federal jury convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding for stealing AI-related trade secrets to benefit China.
- Ding, also known as Leon Ding, found guilty on seven counts of economic espionage and seven of theft of trade secrets.
- The case marks the first conviction on AI-related economic espionage charges in the United States.
- Ding stole over 2,000 pages of sensitive Google AI information and uploaded them to his personal Google Cloud account.
- Important stolen information includes the details of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit chips, graphics processing unit systems, and custom-built SmartNIC.
- Ding faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison for each trade secrets theft count and 15 years for each count of economic espionage.
