Engineer charged with stealing Google’s AI secrets for China arrested in California

Linewei Ding has been accused of taking more than 500 confidential files with sensitive info

Rowan Dunne

Published

March 8, 2024

A Chinese national formerly serving as a software engineer at Alphabet Inc Class A (Google) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) has been arrested for stealing hundreds of files containing confidential information on artificial intelligence.

Linewei Ding, 38, faces up to 10 years in prison and a US$250,000 fine for illegally providing Chinese AI companies with Google’s trade secrets.

“Today’s charges are the latest illustration of the lengths affiliates of companies based in the People’s Republic of China are willing to go to steal American innovation,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

Ding had been working for Google since 2019 prior to illegally uploading files to a personal Google Cloud account beginning in 2022. His legal representatives have remained silent on the matter.

“We are grateful to the FBI for helping protect our information and will continue cooperating with them closely,” Google’s spokesperson Jose Castaneda said.

NEWS ALERT: Today, #FBI ASAC Jeff Fields and @USAO_NDCA announced the arrest of Bay Area resident and former Google employee, Linwei Ding, who has been charged with stealing AI technology from Google. Watch: https://t.co/VjnXoxPqc8

— FBI SanFrancisco (@FBISanFrancisco) March 7, 2024

Ding aimed to use Google’s secrets for his own company

Within weeks of Ding stealing Google’s content, he was offered a chief technical officer position with an early-stage AI company in China, the prosecutors said. Beijing Rongshu Lianzhi Technology was prepared to give him US$14,800 per month along with bonuses and stock.

The indictment also revealed that Ding had created his own AI startup in China: Shanghai Zhisuan Technology. He resigned from Google at the end of 2023. Officials there learned that he had been presented as the chief executive of Zhisuan at a Beijing conference in the following days.

The FBI showed up at Ding’s home with a search warrant in January.

The United States and China have been engaged in shadowy competition in multiple areas for years.

“Since 2017, both the Trump and Biden administrations have sought to use Washington’s leverage in the region to encourage its governments to downgrade their ties with the PRC and demonstrate unity against China,” says the United States Institute of Peace.

“What we can expect is continuing U.S.-China competition within a fluid and highly complex multipolar system,” the National University of Singapore says.