SAN FRANCISCO — A federal jury in San Francisco has convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, of economic espionage and theft of confidential artificial intelligence technology for the benefit of the People’s Republic of China, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday.
Ding, 38, was found guilty on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets following an 11-day trial before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in the Northern District of California. Prosecutors said Ding stole thousands of pages of proprietary AI-related information from Google while secretly pursuing business ventures aligned with Chinese government interests.
According to trial evidence, Ding downloaded more than 2,000 pages of confidential data from Google’s internal network between May 2022 and April 2023 and uploaded the material to his personal cloud account. The stolen files contained trade secrets tied to the hardware and software that power Google’s AI supercomputing systems.
Prosecutors said Ding simultaneously affiliated himself with two China-based technology companies while employed at Google. In mid-2022, he discussed becoming chief technology officer of a startup in China, and by early 2023 he was founding his own AI and machine-learning company there, acting as its chief executive. In investor presentations, Ding claimed he could build an AI supercomputer by copying and modifying Google’s technology, authorities said.
In December 2023, less than two weeks before resigning from Google, Ding allegedly downloaded the stolen trade secrets onto his personal computer.
The jury found Ding had taken confidential information related to Google’s Tensor Processing Unit chips, graphics processing systems, networking software, and infrastructure used to coordinate thousands of chips into AI supercomputers capable of training and running large-scale models. The material also included designs for Google’s SmartNIC networking technology used in high-speed cloud and AI computing.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that Ding sought support from Chinese government-backed programs. In late 2023, he applied for a Shanghai “talent plan,” stating he intended to help China achieve computing infrastructure “on par with the international level.” Investigators said Ding aimed to benefit Chinese government-controlled entities by assisting in the development of AI supercomputers and custom machine-learning chips.
Justice Department officials called the case a milestone in protecting U.S. technology.
“This conviction exposes a calculated breach of trust involving some of the most advanced AI technology in the world,” said Assistant Attorney General John A. Eisenberg. FBI officials said it marked the first conviction involving AI-related economic espionage charges.
Ding was originally indicted in March 2024, with a superseding indictment filed in February 2025 detailing seven categories of stolen trade secrets.
He is scheduled to appear at a status conference on Feb. 3, 2026. Ding faces up to 10 years in prison for each count of theft of trade secrets and up to 15 years for each count of economic espionage. Sentencing will be determined by the court under federal guidelines.
The case was investigated by the FBI and prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California with assistance from the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
