Ex-Google software engineer gets partial win as AI espionage counts dismissed

A federal judge has overturned the seven economic espionage convictions of former Google software engineer Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, while upholding convictions for stealing trade secrets.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco ruled Tuesday that prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence showing Ding knew or intended that his actions would benefit the Chinese government.

However, the judge found ample evidence to support the trade-secret theft convictions.

Ding was convicted in January following an 11-day trial. Prosecutors accused him of copying thousands of pages of confidential information related to the hardware infrastructure and software platforms used by Google's supercomputing data centers to train large artificial intelligence models.

Three weeks after the trial, Ding's lawyers asked the court to acquit him, arguing that the Justice Department had failed to prove the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

About ex-Google engineer conviction

Ding was indicted in March 2024, with a superseding indictment filed in February 2025 expanding the charges.

Prosecutors said he joined Google in May 2019 and began stealing confidential information about three years later while he was being courted by an early-stage Chinese technology company.

The stolen information allegedly included chip blueprints and details of Google's data-center infrastructure. 

Prosecutors said the technology could have helped Google compete with cloud-computing rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft while reducing its reliance on Nvidia chips.

The economic espionage charges each carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a $5 million fine. The trade-secret charges carry up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine per count.

The ruling removes the potential 15-year sentence attached to each of the seven economic espionage counts, but Ding still faces sentencing on the seven trade-secret convictions.

An attorney for Ding said he was gratified by the ruling. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Google, which is owned by Alphabet, was not charged in the case and has said it cooperated with law enforcement.

According to the court docket, Ding is scheduled to be sentenced on September 1.