A Google engineer was accused of stealing the company's trade secrets for China

Linwei Ding, a Chinese Google engineer, was accused of stealing trade secrets related to software and hardware Artificial intelligence chip This company has been accused. According to the Deputy Attorney General, Ding stole more than 500 confidential files containing artificial intelligence trade secrets from Google and used them for companies based in china who are looking for excellence in artificial intelligence.

According to The Verge, much of the stolen data was about Google's Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips. Google's TPU chips power many of its AI-related tasks and, along with Nvidia GPUs, can train and run models like Gemini.

The stolen files include software designs for the V4 and V6 chips, hardware and software specifications for GPUs used in Google's data centers, and designs for Google's machine learning workloads in its data centers.

Stealing Google's trade secrets for China's development

Ding transferred these files to a personal Google Cloud account between May 2022 and May 2023, according to the grand jury. Apparently, he did this by copying the data into his Macbook's Apple Notes app and then converting it to PDF through Apple Notes so it wouldn't be detected by Google's systems.

Also, less than a month after he started stealing these files, a Chinese machine learning company called Rongshu offered him a job as CIO. Also, while working at Google, Ding founded a startup called Zhisuan in China. He has resigned from Google in December 2023.

Ding has been charged with a total of four counts of theft of trade secrets, so if convicted, he faces up to ten years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each charge.