Linwei Ding Google Case: Espionage Counts Tossed

Google engineer convicted at trial, espionage counts vacated

On Thursday, August 20, 2026, Judge Vince Chhabria vacated the seven economic espionage convictions against Linwei Ding and left the seven trade secret theft convictions standing. The jury in San Francisco had convicted Ding, who is also known as Leon Ding, on both sets of counts after an 11-day trial, and the Justice Department announced the verdict on January 30, 2026. Three weeks after the trial, his lawyers filed papers asking the court to acquit him, arguing the government had not proved the charges beyond a reasonable doubt.

The judge ruled that the evidence did not show Ding meant, or knew, that his actions would help China's government. Reuters reports that proof of this is required for conviction on the espionage counts. The judge also said the evidence supported the guilty verdict on the theft counts, so only one of the two sets of seven counts fell.

How each set of counts fared

Charge	Counts	Status after August 20, 2026	Maximum per count
Economic espionage (18 U.S.C. §1831)	7	Vacated	15 years, $5 million
Theft of trade secrets (18 U.S.C. §1832)	7	Convictions stand	10 years, $250,000

An attorney for Ding said he was gratified with the ruling. Reuters says the Justice Department and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Google itself was not charged; it has said it cooperated with law enforcement.

Espionage counts failed on one element: intent to help China

The two charges differ in one element: economic espionage under section 1831 requires a benefit to a foreign government, and trade secret theft under section 1832 does not. Both statutes cover taking a trade secret, and section 1831 adds the state connection, with a longer prison term and a much larger fine. In this case the state connection was the part the judge found unproven.

What separates the two charges

	Theft of trade secrets (§1832)	Economic espionage (§1831)
Foreign government must benefit	No	Yes
Maximum prison term	10 years per count	15 years per count
Maximum fine	$250,000 per count	$5 million per count

The Justice Department had put intent in front of the jury. It said Ding secretly affiliated himself with two technology companies based in China while he worked at Google. Around June 2022 he was in talks to become chief technology officer of an early-stage company there, and by early 2023 he was founding his own AI company in China and acting as its CEO.

Prosecutors said he told potential investors he could build an AI supercomputer by copying and modifying Google's technology. In late 2023 he applied to a government-sponsored "talent plan" in Shanghai, writing that he planned to "help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level." The Justice Department said the trial evidence showed he intended to benefit two entities controlled by the government of China.

The judge nevertheless found the evidence insufficient on that point, and Reuters reports only that finding, not the judge's wider reasoning. After the January verdict, FBI Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky called it the first-ever conviction on AI-related economic espionage charges. The counts vacated in August are the espionage counts that statement referred to.

Jury found Linwei Ding took Google TPU and SmartNIC designs

The jury found that Ding stole the designs behind Google's AI supercomputing: its custom chips, the software that links them, and a custom network card. Between about May 2022 and April 2023, the trial evidence showed, he copied more than two thousand pages of confidential files off the company's network into a personal cloud account, and in December 2023, less than two weeks before he resigned, he downloaded the material onto his own computer. The ruling left this part standing: the judge said the evidence supported the theft verdict.

Trade secret categories named by the Justice Department

Asset	Description
TPU	Architecture and functionality of Google's custom Tensor Processing Unit chips and systems
GPU systems	Architecture and functionality of Google's Graphics Processing Unit systems
Interconnect software	Software that lets the chips communicate and execute tasks
Orchestration software	Software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer
SmartNIC	Custom network interface card for high-speed communication inside Google's AI supercomputers and cloud networking products

Prosecutors said Ding, also known as Leon Ding, joined Google in May 2019 and began taking files three years later, when a Chinese startup was courting him. Reuters adds that part of the chip material was allegedly meant to help Google compete with Amazon and Microsoft in cloud computing, since both design their own chips, and to cut its dependence on Nvidia chips.

Linwei Ding sentencing date and the sentence on theft counts

Sentencing on the seven surviving theft counts was scheduled for September 1, 2026, and each count carries a maximum of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Reuters took the date from the court docket, and the maximums are the most the law allows, not a forecast. The Justice Department says any sentence comes only after the court considers the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the federal sentencing statute, 18 U.S.C. §3553.

Case timeline

Date	Event
March 2024	Ding indicted
February 2025	Superseding indictment: seven categories of trade secrets, seven espionage counts and seven theft counts
January 2026	Jury convicts on all 14 counts after an 11-day trial
August 20, 2026	Seven espionage counts vacated; seven theft counts stand
September 1, 2026	Sentencing scheduled

The ruling lowered the maximum possible sentence, and Reuters' report of the ruling gave September 1 as the sentencing date. Had the espionage counts survived, each would have carried up to 15 years and a $5 million fine, against 10 years and $250,000 for each theft count.

Neither the Reuters report nor the Justice Department's release says whether prosecutors will appeal, and neither reports the sentence itself. Both were published before the September 1 sentencing date.

Insider-risk lessons from the Ding trial and sentencing

The ruling separated the act of taking secrets from the question of who benefited, and only the act was upheld. The theft counts rest on the taking itself, the uploads and the later download, whereas intent to benefit a foreign government comes from outside affiliations, statements to investors and applications. The judge found that evidence insufficient, even though it included talks to join a Chinese startup, a company Ding was founding and a talent-plan application.

For a security team, the practical reading is narrow: the surviving theft counts rest on the taking, which the judge found the evidence supported. A related trade-secret dispute is covered in Apple OpenAI Lawsuit: Trial Set for July 19, 2027. After the ruling, the seven theft counts are what remain for sentencing.