SAN FRANCISCO, USA – A federal jury has convicted former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, 38, of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets, in what officials say is the first-ever AI-related economic espionage conviction in the United States.
The jury found Ding guilty on seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets after an 11-day trial before U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria.
Prosecutors said Ding stole thousands of pages of confidential information detailing Google’s artificial intelligence hardware and software systems, including custom Tensor Processing Unit chips, Graphics Processing Units, and SmartNIC networking technology.
According to the evidence, Ding uploaded the stolen material to his personal Google Cloud account while secretly affiliating with two China-based AI companies and seeking to advance his own PRC-aligned AI ventures.
Prosecutors said he aimed to help China build AI supercomputing infrastructure comparable to global standards.
“This conviction exposes a calculated breach of trust involving some of the most advanced AI technology in the world,” said Assistant Attorney General John Eisenberg.
FBI Special Agent Sanjay Virmani added, “The theft and misuse of advanced AI technology threatens U.S. technological leadership and national security.”
Ding, who faces a maximum of 15 years for each economic espionage count and 10 years for each theft count, is next scheduled to appear at a status conference on February 3, 2026.
The case highlights increasing concerns over foreign attempts to access sensitive U.S. technology amid the global race for AI dominance.
The jury found that Ding stole trade secrets relating to the hardware infrastructure and software platforms that allow Google’s supercomputing data center to train and serve large AI models.
The trade secrets contained detailed information about the architecture and functionality of Google’s custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and systems and Google’s Graphics Processing Unit systems, the software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and executing cutting-edge AI workloads.
The trade secrets also pertained to Google’s custom-designed SmartNIC, a type of network interface card used to facilitate high speed communication within Google’s AI supercomputers and cloud networking products.
