ExGoogle Worker Guilty of Stealing AI Tech for Chinese Firm 3

p Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information people and ideas Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information news and insight around the world ppAmericas1 212 318 2000 ppEMEA44 20 7330 7500 ppAsia Pacific65 6212 1000 pp Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information people and ideas Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information news and insight around the world ppAmericas1 212 318 2000 ppEMEA44 20 7330 7500 ppAsia Pacific65 6212 1000 ppA former Google engineer was convicted Thursday of economic espionage and trade secrets theft for taking hundreds of the companys confidential documents on AI chip technology to build a startup in China ppA 12person jury in San Francisco federal court after three hours of deliberation unanimously found Linwei Ding guilty on all seven counts of trade secrets theft and all seven counts of economic espionage for benefiting the Chinese government ppThe verdict caps off a twoandahalf week criminal trial in the US District Court for the Northern District of California where federal prosecutors claimed that Ding a Chinese national first hired by Google in 2019 copied thousands of internal Google documents onto his Apple Notes App and uploaded them as PDFs to his personal computer ppDing declined to comment after the verdict was read His attorney Grant Fondo of Goodwin Procter LLP said he respects the jurys verdict but disagreed with the outcome ppThe jury delivered a clear message today that the theft of this valuable technology will not go unpunished Craig Missakian US Attorney for the Northern District of California said in a press statement We will vigorously protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests that seek to gain an unfair competitive advantage while putting our national security at riskppGoogles Vice President of Regulatory Affairs LeeAnne Mulholland said in a statement that the company is grateful to the jury for making sure justice was servedppJudge Vince Chhabria after the verdict said that Ding 38 was not a flight risk and ruled that he could remain out of custody until sentencing Ding faces up to 10 years in prison for each trade secrets count and 15 years for each economic espionage countppThe government said 105 of the documents Ding stole were confidential trade secrets covering technical details about how Google designs builds and organizes specialized chips called Tensor Processing Units and Graphical Processing Units to create supercomputers that train large language AI models ppBeginning in May 2022 while still an employee at Google Ding began looking for other job opportunities in China That year he founded an AI firm in China called Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies Co and told investors that the startup could replicate Googles AI supercomputing technology and that he was one of 10 people in the world who could do so ppHis stealing of the documents allowed him to skip huge parts of the design process for an AI supercomputer and undercut a decade of work by Google and millions of dollars in investments prosecutors alleged ppThe defendant wanted more from himself than what his knowledge and experience could get him so he stole cheated and lied Assistant US Attorney Molly Priedeman told the jury during closing argumentsppDing was first charged with trade secrets theft in March 2024 before prosecutors brought additional economic espionage charges in February 2025 The espionage counts claimed Ding applied to a Shanghaibased talent program sponsored by the Peoples Republic of China that sought to grow the countrys AI industryppProsecutors alleged that he engaged in a number of deceitful tactics to cover his tracks including lying to an investigator about whether he had Google documents on his personal computer and asking one of his former interns to swipe his badge at Googles offices while he was in China working on his startup ppHis scheme unraveled in late 2023 when Google locked him out of the company network after learning that he gave a public presentation in China to potential investors about his startup ppDings defense hinged in large part on arguments that the documents he took dont meet the legal definition of a trade secret which require Google to take reasonable measures to protect the secret Many of the documents he copied could be accessed by over 160000 Google employees and contractors and the company had an incoherent confidentiality labeling system his attorneys said ppThey also argued that prosecutors failed to show he had any intent to use the documents to benefit his company or China The government was asking the jury to speculate about what he would have done with the trade secrets ppHe never used them he never transferred them he never tried to sell them Fondo told the jury during closing argumentsppThe case is USA v Ding ND Cal No 324cr00141 12926ppTo contact the reporter on this story Isaiah Poritz in San Francisco at iporitzbloombergindustrycomppTo contact the editors responsible for this story Stephanie Gleason at sgleasonbloombergindustrycom Patrick L Gregory at pgregorybloombergindustrycompp Bloomberg Law provides trusted coverage of current events enhanced with legal analysis pp Log in to keep reading or access research tools and resources p