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On January 29, 2026, a federal district court in San Francisco, California, found former Google software engineer Leon Ding, a Chinese national, guilty of trade secret theft and economic espionage. The verdict was handed down after an 11-day jury trial, with 12 jurors finding the defendant guilty of all 14 charges, alleging that he stole a vast amount of confidential AI-related information from Google, a major American IT company, and benefited two Chinese companies with which he was secretly collaborating.
Ex-Google Worker Guilty of Stealing AI Tech for Chinese Firm (3)
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/esg/ex-google-engineer-guilty-of-stealing-ai-tech-for-chinese-firm
Jury finds ex-Google engineer guilty of stealing AI trade secrets for Chinese companies | Courthouse News Service
https://www.courthousenews.com/jury-finds-ex-google-engineer-guilty-of-stealing-ai-trade-secrets-for-chinese-companies/
California Jury Convicts Ex-Google Engineer of Stealing AI Secrets – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/business/ai-secrets-stolen-google-china.html
Ding was hired by Google in 2019 and was part of a team responsible for the design and maintenance of data centers. According to evidence presented by the prosecution, over a period of approximately one year from May 2022, Ding copied 1,255 documents totaling an estimated 14,000 pages, including AI chip technologies such as TPUs and GPUs, into Apple’s Notes app, converted them to PDFs, and uploaded them to his personal cloud storage. These documents contained sensitive confidential information about the hardware and software platforms of supercomputers used to train AI models.
by Ben Nuttall
Furthermore, while working at Google, Ding founded an AI startup company, Shanghai Zhisuan Technologies Co., in Shanghai in 2022. He claimed to investors that his company could replicate Google’s AI supercomputing technology and promoted himself as one of 10 people in the world who could achieve this. Ding also applied for the Chinese government’s Shanghai Talent Initiative, expressing his intention to help China develop a computing power infrastructure that rivals international standards.
With his guilty verdict, Ding faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count of trade secret theft, and up to 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine for each count of economic espionage. His defense argued that the documents in question did not meet the legal definition of trade secrets and that he had no intention of benefiting China, but these arguments were not accepted by the jury.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said the theft of valuable technology will not go unpunished and emphasized its strong commitment to protecting America’s intellectual capital from foreign interests.
Following the verdict, Google issued a statement saying, ‘We thank the jury for their dedication to ensuring justice is served. Google and the US federal prosecutors applaud the jury’s decision and believe this verdict demonstrates that the US legal system protects companies’ technology and intellectual property from theft.’
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