Former Google Engineer Convicted For Stealing AI Secrets

Former Google software engineer Linwei Ding was convicted on January 30, 2026, by a federal jury in San Francisco of seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets for stealing thousands of pages of confidential AI-related information to benefit two Chinese companies. Prosecutors said the theft targeted hardware and software designs for Google's supercomputing data centers and chip blueprints; sentencing and fines could be substantial.