AFTER HOURS

Ex-Google Engineer Charged With Stealing AI Secrets for Chinese Companies

An indictment alleges that Linwei Ding quietly began stealing confidential information about the company’s machine learning processes two years ago.

A former software engineer at Google was indicted on charges of stealing secrets related to the company’s artificial intelligence technology to aid two companies in China, according to an indictment handed down by a federal jury in California on Tuesday. The indictment, obtained by the Associated Press, charges Linwei Ding, a 38-year-old Chinese national, with four counts of theft of trade secrets. Each count is punishable by up to 10 years in prison, according to the AP. The indictment reportedly alleges that Ding, who was hired by Google in 2019, began putting confidential information about Google’s supercomputers and their machine learning processes on his Google Cloud account two years ago. Weeks later, he began working with a pair of AI tech startups in China. He resigned from Google in late December without ever having disclosed his overseas interests, prosecutors wrote. Days later, however, Google officials learned Ding had attended an investor conference in Beijing as CEO of one of the companies. A spokesperson for the company told The Daily Beast that they had referred the case to law enforcement after an internal investigation revealed a “junior” employee acting on their own had “stolen numerous documents.” A lawyer for Ding was not immediately identified in court records.