Former Google engineer steals AI secrets for China

Ding, 38 years old, was convicted by a US court in San Francisco on January 29 after an 11-day trial on 7 counts of economic espionage and 7 counts of theft of commercial secrets. According to records, Ding stole thousands of pages of confidential information from Google in 2022-2023, then smuggled it to two Chinese companies where he was secretly working.

Each charge of economic espionage carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of $5 million, while the charge of theft of trade secrets carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The US Department of Justice said the final verdict will be issued on February 3.

Court documents show that Ding was initially indicted in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets. However, the additional indictment in February 2025 expanded the investigation with a series of other charges. In it, Ding stole detailed information about the hardware and software infrastructure that allows Google’s supercomputer data center to train AI models through machine learning. The stolen items included details about chips, systems and software that help the supercomputer “capable of performing at the cutting edge of machine learning and AI technology”.

Ding was recruited by Alphabet, Google’s parent company, in 2019. This person first committed theft in 2022 after a Chinese technology company secretly “invited” him to be its chief technology officer. Ding also went to China for several months, participated in meetings with investors to raise money for the company, and took a 20% stake.

As of May 2023, Ding is said to have downloaded more than 500 files from Google servers to his personal computer. Also in the same month, this person founded his own technology company and applied to a startup program in China. Google began to suspect Ding in December 2023. The company confiscated the laptop on January 1, 2024, before Ding planned to resign.

Google did not respond to requests for comment.