A federal grand jury returned a superseding indictment on Feb. 4 for a Chinese man, raising the charges to seven counts of economic espionage and seven counts of theft of trade secrets in connection with an alleged plan to steal from Google LLC (Google) proprietary information related to AI technology.
He was initially indicted in March 2024 on four counts of theft of trade secrets.
According to the superseding indictment, Google hired him as a software engineer in 2019. Between approximately May 2022 and May 2023, he uploaded more than 1,000 unique files containing Google confidential information from Google’s network to his personal Google Cloud account, including the trade secrets alleged in the superseding indictment.
While he was employed by Google, he secretly affiliated himself with two People’s Republic of China (PRC)-based technology companies. Around June 2022, he was in discussions to be the Chief Technology Officer for an early-stage technology company based in the PRC. By May 2023, he had founded his own technology company focused on AI and machine learning in the PRC and was acting as the company’s CEO.
The superseding indictment alleges that he intended to benefit the PRC government by stealing trade secrets from Google. He allegedly stole technology relating to the hardware infrastructure and software platform that allows Google’s supercomputing data center to train and serve large AI models. The trade secrets contain detailed information about the architecture and functionality of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems and Google’s Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) systems, the software that allows the chips to communicate and execute tasks, and the software that orchestrates thousands of chips into a supercomputer capable of training and executing cutting-edge AI workloads. The trade secrets also pertain to Google’s custom-designed SmartNIC, a type of network interface card used to enhance Google’s GPU, high performance, and cloud networking products.
As alleged, he circulated a PowerPoint presentation to employees of his technology company citing PRC national policies encouraging the development of the domestic AI industry. He also created a PowerPoint presentation containing an application to a PRC talent program based in Shanghai. The superseding indictment describes how PRC-sponsored talent programs incentivize individuals engaged in research and development outside the PRC to transmit that knowledge and research to the PRC in exchange for salaries, research funds, lab space, or other incentives. His application for the talent program stated that his company’s product “will help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level.”
If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine for each trade-secret count and 15 years in prison and $5,000,000 fine for each economic-espionage count. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.
The FBI is investigating the case. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Casey Boome and Molly K. Priedeman for the Northern District of California and Trial Attorneys Stephen Marzen and Yifei Zheng of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section are prosecuting the case.
Today’s action was coordinated through the Justice and Commerce Departments’ Disruptive Technology Strike Force. The Disruptive Technology Strike Force is an interagency law enforcement strike force co-led by the Departments of Justice and Commerce designed to target illicit actors, protect supply chains, and prevent critical technology from being acquired by authoritarian regimes and hostile nation-states.