Ex-Google engineer found guilty of stealing AI secrets for China
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
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A federal jury in San Francisco convicted Linwei Ding of stealing over 2,000 pages of confidential Google AI technology and sharing it with Chinese tech firms, with prosecutors accusing him of planning to use the secrets to build an AI supercomputer.
Ding, who was in talks for a chief technology officer role at a Chinese AI startup, downloaded the stolen Google trade secrets to his personal computer just weeks before resigning from Google, according to the Department of Justice.
The conviction sends a "clear message" that the theft of valuable AI technology will not go unpunished, said U.S. Attorney Craig Missakian, with Google's Lee-Anne Mulholland stating that "stealing trade secrets has serious consequences" and pledging to protect American intellectual capital from foreign interests.
