Ex-Google engineer faces new U.S. charges he stole AI secrets for Chinese companies

U.S. prosecutors on Tuesday unveiled an expanded 14-count indictment accusing former Google software engineer Linwei Ding of stealing artificial intelligence trade secrets to benefit two Chinese companies he was secretly working for.

Ding, 38, a Chinese national, was charged by a federal grand jury in San Francisco with seven counts each of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets.

Each economic espionage charge carries a maximum 15-year prison term and $5 million fine, while each trade secrets charge carries a maximum 10-year term and $250,000 fine.

The defendant, also known as Leon Ding, was indicted last March on four counts of theft of trade secrets. He is free on bond. Lawyers for Ding did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ding's case was coordinated through an interagency Disruptive Technology Strike Force created in 2023 by the Biden administration.

The initiative was designed to help stop advanced technology from being acquired by countries such as China and Russia, or potentially threatening national security.

Prosecutors said Ding stole information about the hardware infrastructure and software platform that lets Google's supercomputing data centers train large AI models.

Some of the allegedly stolen chip blueprints were meant to give Google an edge over cloud computing rivals Amazon.com and Microsoft, which design their own, and reduce Google's reliance on chips from Nvidia.

Prosecutors said Ding joined Google in May 2019 and began his thefts three years later, when he was being courted to join an early-stage Chinese technology company.

Ding allegedly uploaded more than 1,000 confidential files by May 2023 and later circulated a PowerPoint presentation to employees of a China startup he founded, saying that country's policies encouraged development of a domestic AI industry.

Google was not charged and has said it cooperated with law enforcement.

According to court records describing a Dec. 18 hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers discussed a "potential resolution" to Ding's case, "but anticipate the matter proceeding to trial."

The case is U.S. v. Ding, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 24-cr-00141.