Ex-Google engineer’s conviction for stealing AI secrets partially overturned

AI. A person visits the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, China July 26, 2025

Go Nakamura/Reuters

Linwei Ding, a Chinese national, is found guilty in January of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets for stealing thousands of pages of confidential information

AT A GLANCE

• A federal judge overturned part of Linwei Ding's conviction for economic espionage, citing insufficient evidence of intent to benefit the Chinese government.
• Ding was found guilty of stealing trade secrets from Google, with charges carrying significant prison terms and fines.
• Ding's sentencing is scheduled for September 1, and he was indicted in March 2024, with allegations of theft related to Google's AI infrastructure.

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DELAWARE, USA – A federal judge on Thursday, August 20, tossed part of the conviction of former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, who was found guilty earlier this year of stealing AI trade secrets from the US tech giant to benefit two Chinese companies.

US District Court Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ruled there was insufficient evidence Ding intended or knew his conduct would benefit the government of China, a requirement to convict him on seven counts of economic espionage. Chhabria said evidence supported the guilty verdict on the theft of trade secrets.

Ding, a Chinese national, was found guilty in January after an 11-day trial of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets for stealing thousands of pages of confidential information.

Three weeks after the trial, Ding’s lawyers filed papers seeking his acquittal, arguing the Justice Department failed to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

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.

Ding is scheduled to be sentenced on September 1, according to the court docket.

An attorney for Ding, also known as Leon Ding, said he was gratified with the ruling. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ding was originally indicted in March 2024 and a superseding indictment in February 2025 expanded the charges. 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, owned by Alphabet, 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.

Google was not charged and has said it cooperated with law enforcement. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – Rappler.com