A federal grand jury in San Francisco has returned a superseding indictment against Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, charging him with seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets. The charges relate to an alleged plan to steal proprietary information on artificial intelligence technology from Google LLC.
Ding was initially charged in March 2024 with four counts of theft of trade secrets. The new indictment outlines seven categories of trade secrets allegedly stolen by Ding and adds additional charges.
According to the indictment, Ding was hired by Google as a software engineer in 2019. Between May 2022 and May 2023, he reportedly uploaded over 1,000 files containing confidential Google information to his personal Google Cloud account. These files included the trade secrets mentioned in the indictment.
While employed at Google, Ding allegedly affiliated himself with two technology companies based in the People's Republic of China (PRC). In June 2022, he was reportedly discussing becoming Chief Technology Officer for a PRC-based startup. By May 2023, he had founded his own AI-focused technology company in the PRC and was serving as its CEO.
The indictment alleges that Ding intended to benefit the PRC government by stealing Google's trade secrets. These include details about Google's hardware infrastructure and software platform used for training large AI models. Specifically, it mentions Google's Tensor Processing Unit chips and systems, Graphics Processing Unit systems, SmartNICs for enhancing GPU performance, and cloud networking products.
Ding is accused of circulating a PowerPoint presentation within his company citing PRC policies promoting domestic AI development. He also created a presentation for a Shanghai-based PRC talent program application stating that his company's product "will help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level."
United States Attorney Ismail J. Ramsey and FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Dan Costin announced the charges.
"An indictment merely alleges that crimes have been committed," they stated. "All defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt." If convicted, Ding faces up to 10 years in prison per count under 18 U.S.C. § 1832 and up to 15 years per count under 18 U.S.C § 1831.
Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey Boome and Molly K. Priedeman along with Trial Attorneys Stephen Marzen and Yifei Zheng are prosecuting the case following an FBI investigation.
This action is part of efforts coordinated through the Justice and Commerce Departments' Disruptive Technology Strike Force aimed at protecting critical technology from acquisition by authoritarian regimes.