Overview
- Linwei Ding was found guilty on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of trade secret theft by a federal jury in San Francisco.
- He faces maximum penalties of up to 15 years per espionage count and up to 10 years per trade secrets count, with fines possible under federal law.
- Prosecutors said he uploaded more than 2,000 pages of confidential Google AI materials to a personal cloud account between May 2022 and April 2023 and later downloaded them to a personal computer before resigning.
- The stolen information covered Google’s AI supercomputing infrastructure, including TPU and GPU systems, cluster management and orchestration software, and custom SmartNIC designs.
- Trial evidence showed he secretly affiliated with two PRC-based companies, including founding Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies, and the Justice Department said the case was coordinated through its Disruptive Technology Strike Force while the judge released him pending sentencing.