A California federal jury on Thursday delivered a swift and sweeping verdict in the Ex-Google Engineer AI Secrets theft suit, finding former Google software engineer Linwei Ding guilty on all 14 criminal counts tied to the theft of artificial intelligence trade secrets and economic espionage.
The unanimous decision by the 12-member jury came after less than three hours of deliberations, capping a 10-day trial that prosecutors framed as a high-stakes battle over the crown jewels of U.S. artificial intelligence innovation.
Jury Convicts on All Counts
Ding, 39, was convicted of seven counts of trade secret theft and seven counts of economic espionage, matching every charge brought by federal prosecutors. Authorities alleged that the stolen information was intended to benefit Ding personally and advance technology interests in China.
Ding worked at Google from 2019 through the end of 2023 and was arrested in 2024.
Thousands of Pages, Dozens of Secrets
According to prosecutors, beginning in May 2022, Ding transferred more than 14,000 pages of internal Google documents to his personal computer. The cache allegedly included 105 trade secrets tied to Google’s supercomputing data centers—systems essential for training and operating large language models.
The information spanned highly sensitive areas, from custom-designed chips to cloud networking software architecture, forming what prosecutors described as a technical roadmap competitors could exploit.
