- Linwei Ding has been sentenced to 12 months minus one day in prison for stealing confidential technology linked to Google’s AI infrastructure.
- Ding was found guilty after an 11-day trial on seven counts of theft of trade secrets and seven counts of economic espionage.
- He must also pay more than $189,000 in restitution and a $25,000 fine.
- Ding uploaded over 500 confidential files to a personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023.
- In December 2023, Ding downloaded the material to his personal computer shortly before leaving Google.
- Ding's actions included visiting Rongshu, a Chinese tech company that offered him a CTO role in late 2022.
- In 2023, he founded Zhisuan, a China-based AI company.
- US District Judge Vince Chhabria described Ding's conduct as a systematic, brazen effort to steal Google’s property.
- Ding joined Google as a software engineer in 2019 and became a lawful permanent resident in 2021.
- Prosecutors claimed Ding's role at Google gave him access to confidential information about the hardware and software infrastructure used in Google’s supercomputing data centres.
- The case highlights ongoing tensions as US restrictions limit China’s access to advanced GPUs.
Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer, was sentenced to 12 months minus a day in prison for stealing sensitive AI technology intended for Chinese startups. The court found him guilty of transferring over 1,000 confidential files related to Google’s AI infrastructure, including details about Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).1
Ding, who joined Google in 2019, began transferring confidential material to a personal Google Cloud account on May 21, 2022, and continued until May 2, 2023. Prosecutors revealed that he uploaded more than 500 files during this period, with evidence indicating over 2,000 pages of sensitive information.79
The judge, US District Judge Vince Chhabria, emphasized the seriousness of Ding's actions, describing them as a “systematic, brazen effort” to steal Google’s property. Ding will also serve two years of supervised release and pay $189,000 in restitution along with a $25,000 fine.38
Ding's actions included plans to replicate Google’s large-scale computing platform for Chinese needs, raising concerns about potential economic espionage. However, the judge noted that there was no evidence Ding intended to benefit the Chinese government directly.
Ding, a Chinese national who became a lawful permanent resident in 2021, had previously worked at several Silicon Valley companies before his tenure at Google. His theft convictions remain intact, despite the economic-espionage counts being set aside by the court.
“Ding transferred over 500 confidential files, including details of Google's TPUs, GPUs, and SmartNIC, between May 2022 and May 2023. He also founded Zhisuan, a China-based AI company, and applied to a Chinese government talent program, though the judge found no intent to benefit the Chinese government.”
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