United States v. Ding is a federal criminal prosecution in the Northern District of California against Linwei Ding, also known as Leon Ding, a former Google software engineer charged with stealing trade secrets relating to the hardware and software platform Google uses to train and serve large AI models. A San Francisco jury convicted Ding on all fourteen counts in January 2026 — seven counts of theft of trade secrets under 18 U.S.C. § 1832 and seven counts of economic espionage under 18 U.S.C. § 1831 — in what the Justice Department described as the first U.S. conviction on AI-related economic-espionage charges (DOJ: Former Google Engineer Convicted of Economic Espionage (Linwei Ding)). On August 20, 2026, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria granted Ding's motion for a judgment of acquittal on the seven economic-espionage counts, finding the evidence insufficient to establish that Ding intended or knew his conduct would benefit the government of the People's Republic of China at the time he took the documents. The trade-secrets convictions stand, and sentencing is scheduled for September 1, 2026 (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Court | U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco) |
| Judge | Vince Chhabria |
| Defendant | Linwei Ding, a.k.a. Leon Ding, PRC national; Google software engineer from 2019 |
| Initial indictment | March 2024 — 4 counts of theft of trade secrets |
| Superseding indictment | February 2025 — 7 × theft of trade secrets (18 U.S.C. § 1832); 7 × economic espionage (18 U.S.C. § 1831) |
| Jury verdict | Guilty on all 14 counts, January 2026 |
| Post-trial ruling | Judgment of acquittal on the 7 economic-espionage counts, August 20, 2026 |
| Standing convictions | 7 counts of theft of trade secrets |
| Sentencing | Scheduled September 1, 2026 |
| Maximum exposure remaining | 10 years and $250,000 per trade-secrets count |
| Defense counsel | Grant Fondo, Goodwin Procter |
Background
Google hired Ding in 2019 as a software engineer working on its supercomputing data centers. The government alleged that beginning in spring 2022 he copied information from internal Google documents into the notes application on his company-issued laptop, converted the notes to PDFs, and uploaded them to a personal cloud account. The government put the total at 1,255 documents, an estimated 14,000 pages, transferred between spring 2022 and spring 2023, with a further download from the personal cloud account to a personal laptop in December 2023 (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
Ding was first indicted in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets, in a case the Justice Department announced alongside an allegation that he had covertly affiliated himself with two PRC-based technology companies while employed at Google, and that he had taken measures to conceal the copying. The original indictment put the volume at more than 500 confidential files (Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/chinese-national-residing-california-arrested-theft-artificial-intelligence-related-trade).
A superseding indictment returned in February 2025 described seven categories of trade secrets and charged one count of each offense per category, producing the fourteen-count structure. The Justice Department's description of the material is more specific than the coverage: the architecture and functionality of Google's tensor processing unit chips and systems and of its GPU systems; the software allowing the chips to communicate and execute tasks; the software orchestrating thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and running frontier AI workloads; and Google's custom-designed SmartNIC network interface card. The superseding indictment placed the uploads at more than 1,000 unique files moved from Google's network to Ding's personal cloud account between approximately May 2022 and May 2023 (Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/superseding-indictment-charges-chinese-national-relation-alleged-plan-steal-proprietary-ai).
Claims
The two statutes differ in one element, and the case turned entirely on it. Theft of trade secrets under § 1832 requires intent to convert a trade secret to the economic benefit of someone other than the owner. Economic espionage under § 1831 additionally requires that the defendant intended or knew the offense would benefit a foreign government, instrumentality or agent. The government's theory was that while uploading files in spring 2022, Ding was planning to make his own Chinese technology venture, Zhisuan Technology, successful through partnership with the Chinese government, and it pointed to his statements in November 2023 touting relationships with Chinese instrumentalities and to his December 2023 application to a Chinese government talent program (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
Procedural history
Ding was charged in 2024 and pleaded not guilty. Trial was held in January 2026; Courthouse News describes it as a two-week trial, while Reuters reports an eleven-day trial (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/; Source: https://bworldonline.com/technology/2026/08/21/771737/ex-google-engineers-conviction-for-stealing-ai-secrets-partially-overturned/). The jury returned guilty verdicts on all fourteen counts, announced by the Justice Department on January 30, 2026 (DOJ: Former Google Engineer Convicted of Economic Espionage (Linwei Ding)).
In February 2026 Ding moved for a new trial, for a mistrial, and for a judgment of acquittal, contesting every count. In June 2026 Chhabria denied acquittal on the trade-secrets counts, concluding that a rational juror could have found beyond a reasonable doubt that Ding intended to take the information and that the government had presented "overwhelming evidence" that he planned to benefit himself and the company he was forming in China (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
Chhabria addressed the economic-espionage counts in a separate 18-page order issued August 20, 2026. He found the evidence insufficient for a rational juror to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that Ding possessed the intent to benefit the Chinese government at the times of the uploads:
In the months following his final theft of the trade secrets, Ding may have eventually developed the intent necessary to support the economic espionage charges. But the evidence was too thin to support a conclusion — at least under the reasonable doubt standard — that at the various times of the illegal uploads Ding already intended or knew that his conduct would benefit the Chinese government.
The order treated the November and December 2023 evidence as "too removed in time" from the 2022–2023 uploads to carry the inference, offering the contrast that if trade secrets were stolen on a Monday and transmitted to a Chinese government official that Friday, "nobody would question a finding that he stole the trade secrets with the intent to benefit the government." Chhabria also characterized the trial evidence as showing efforts that were "ad hoc, disorganized and feeble," with Ding appearing to be "making things up as he went along," and rejected the government's alternate theory — that the requisite intent existed at the December 2023 download even if not at the uploads — on the ground that the government never presented that theory to the jury. Because the order mandates acquittal rather than a new trial, double-jeopardy protections bar retrial on those counts (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
Chhabria had previously ordered Ding released pending sentencing, finding him neither a danger to the public nor a flight risk.
Current status
Seven trade-secrets convictions stand; the seven economic-espionage convictions are vacated by acquittal. Sentencing is set for September 1, 2026, with a statutory maximum of ten years and a $250,000 fine per remaining count. Grant Fondo of Goodwin Procter, counsel for Ding, said the defense was "gratified that the court granted our motion and acquitted Mr. Ding as to each of the economic espionage charges." A Justice Department representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling (Source: https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-acquits-ex-google-engineer-of-economic-espionage-in-ai-secrets-case/).
The August ruling removes the heavier half of Ding's sentencing exposure, since the espionage counts carried up to fifteen years and a $5,000,000 fine each, against ten years and $250,000 for the theft counts (Source: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/superseding-indictment-charges-chinese-national-relation-alleged-plan-steal-proprietary-ai). The Next Web characterized the outcome as reducing the matter to "a theft case, serious but ordinary," and read the ruling as drawing a line the Justice Department did not want drawn between AI trade-secret theft as a national-security matter and as a commercial dispute (Source: https://thenextweb.com/news/linwei-ding-espionage-convictions-overturned-google). That is a commentator's characterization rather than a holding.
Commentary and use in policy debate
The January 2026 conviction was cited as empirical support for the proposition that Chinese actors are engaged in AI technology theft from U.S. firms, an argument used to ground export-control and chip-restriction policy (DOJ: Former Google Engineer Convicted of Economic Espionage (Linwei Ding)). The Foundation for Defense of Democracies framed the conviction as precedent for revived China Initiative-style enforcement. The August acquittal narrows what the case supports: the government proved the taking but not, to the trial court's satisfaction, the state nexus, which is the element that distinguishes economic espionage from ordinary trade-secret theft. Whether the government appeals, and on what theory, is not established as of August 22, 2026.
Open questions
- Whether the Justice Department appeals the judgment of acquittal to the Ninth Circuit.
- What sentence follows on September 1, 2026, which Chhabria's June order suggests will turn on the valuation of the material taken and on findings about commercial intent.
- Whether the ruling affects charging decisions in other pending AI trade-secret matters that pair § 1831 and § 1832 counts.
Relationships
- instance-of: AI and National Security — a concrete case of alleged foreign-linked appropriation of frontier AI infrastructure
- supports: Export Controls (AI) — the taking was proven, and is cited in the export-control debate
- contradicts: DOJ: Former Google Engineer Convicted of Economic Espionage (Linwei Ding) — that page records fourteen standing convictions; seven of them no longer stand
- related: Taiwan v. Chen Li-ming et al. (TSMC 2nm Trade-Secret Case) — parallel prosecution over semiconductor trade secrets
- related: AI Race Dynamics — the case is used on both sides of the theft-versus-diffusion argument
- related: DOJ AI Enforcement Actions Compendium (2024–2026) — earlier DOJ enforcement summary covering this case