U.S. State Department sanctions five entities, including firm of Linwei Ding, who stole Google AI secrets, and Chinese accelerator that invested in it

WASHINGTON

The U.S. State Department on Oct. 19 (local time) sanctioned five Chinese entities connected to Linwei Ding, a Chinese national and former Google engineer who stole confidential information on Google's artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputers. The targets are Shanghai Zhisuan (上海至算科技有限公司), which Ding founded, Beijing-based startup accelerator Qiji Chuangtan (奇绩创坛, MiraclePlus), which funded the company, and three funds and entities affiliated with Qiji Chuangtan. The action was taken under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act (PAIPA), signed on Jan. 5, 2023. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on the same day added the five to the Non-SDN Menu-Based Sanctions List (NS-MBS) and issued two general licenses.

State Department calls theft of Google secrets a threat to U.S. national security

The Office of the Spokesperson said in a press statement that day: "Today, the Department of State is sanctioning five entities connected to People's Republic of China national Linwei Ding under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act (PAIPA) in connection with theft of trade secrets from U.S. persons." The statement was issued in the name of spokesperson Thomas "Tommy" Pigott.

The State Department said the United States has long led the development of new technologies and that "This theft of trade secrets is a serious threat to U.S. economic, foreign policy, and national security interests." It added that theft of trade secrets related to sensitive and emerging technologies harms American jobs, businesses and investment and "costs U.S. industry billions of dollars each year."

The State Department said the designations followed investigations by the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). According to the statement, Ding was convicted of stealing thousands of pages of confidential Google information related to super intelligence technology to benefit himself and Chinese technology companies. The statement ended: "The Trump Administration remains committed to protecting American innovation and safeguarding Americans from intellectual property theft."

Targets split between Ding's Zhisuan and Qiji Chuangtan entities that took equity

Shanghai Zhisuan appears in the court's June 29 order as "the company he was in the process of forming with his business partner in China." The OFAC listing gives its date of establishment as Oct. 17, 2023, and its address as No. 487 Tianlin Road, Xuhui District, Shanghai.

Qiji Chuangtan's full name is Qiji Chuangtan (Beijing) Investment Management Co Ltd. The OFAC listing gives its date of establishment as March 6, 2019, and lists "MIRACLEPLUS" as an alias. Qiji Chuangtan's website says it selects large numbers of early-stage startup teams twice a year to invest in and incubate. The court described Qiji Chuangtan as "an early-stage startup accelerator based in China."

The remaining three are Qiji Chuangtan-affiliated entities organized as limited partnerships. According to the OFAC listing, Beijing Qiji Chuangtan Phase I Venture Capital Center was established in June 2020, the Phase II Venture Capital Center in October 2022, and Beijing Qiji Chuangtan Zhiyuan Enterprise Management Center on Nov. 8, 2019. The aliases of the Phase I and Phase II funds are "MIRACLE PLUS RMB FUND I" and "MIRACLE PLUS RMB FUND II," respectively. All three entries carry a "Linked To" notation referring to Qiji Chuangtan. All four share the same address: Room 601, 6th Floor, No. 28 Chengfu Road, Haidian District, Beijing.

Qiji Chuangtan's website says it has held 10 startup camps to date and incubated 612 projects. Its list of partners includes four people, among them Dr. Lu Qi (陆奇). The website's front page, checked on Oct. 20, made no mention of the U.S. sanctions.

Five of the law's 12 measures imposed, the statutory minimum

PAIPA requires the president to identify, in a report to Congress, foreign persons who have engaged in or benefited from significant theft of trade secrets of U.S. persons. Those to be identified include persons who engaged in or benefited from the theft, persons who provided significant financial, material or technological support for or significantly benefited from it, entities owned or controlled by such persons, and the chief executive officers and board members of those entities. The first report is due within 180 days of enactment and at least annually thereafter.

The law requires that "5 or more" of 12 measures be imposed on identified entities. The State Department chose the same five measures for all five entities, (A), (D), (H), (I) and (J) of Section 2(b)(1), the minimum the law requires. They are a freeze on property and interests in property within U.S. jurisdiction, a ban on U.S. financial institutions making loans or providing credit of more than $10 million in any 12-month period, a ban on foreign exchange transactions subject to U.S. jurisdiction, restrictions on bank transfers and payments subject to U.S. jurisdiction, and a ban on U.S. persons purchasing significant amounts of equity or debt.

Not included were (B), placement on the Commerce Department's export control Entity List, (C), a cutoff of Export-Import Bank financing, (G), a ban on federal government procurement, and (K), denial of visas to corporate officers. The law requires asset freezes and entry bans for identified foreign individuals, but only the five entities were listed that day, and Ding himself was not included. The law exempts transactions involving the importation of goods from sanctions.

Treasury sets Jan. 19 deadline to wind down dealings with Qiji Chuangtan entities

OFAC tagged each of the five entries with a "PAIPA" identifier when it listed them that day. Each entry includes a PAIPA Section 2 information field showing the five measures applied to that entity, along with their provision numbers.

PAIPA General License No. 2, issued in the name of OFAC Director Bradley T. Smith, authorizes transactions "ordinarily incident and necessary to the wind down" of dealings with Qiji Chuangtan, the three funds and entities 50% or more owned by them until 12:01 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Jan. 19, 2027. Payments to sanctioned parties during that period must be made into blocked accounts in the United States. Zhisuan, founded by Ding, is not covered by the wind-down license.

General License No. 1 authorizes transactions otherwise prohibited under PAIPA if they are authorized or exempt under the cyber-related sanctions regulations (31 CFR Part 578). Both licenses were issued that day.

Jury convicted Ding on all seven counts of trade secret theft

According to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, Ding joined Google as a software engineer in 2019. A jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Jan. 29, 2026, after an 11-day trial, found Ding guilty on all seven counts of economic espionage and all seven counts of theft of trade secrets.

The Justice Department said that from around May 2022 to around April 2023, Ding moved more than 2,000 pages of Google's confidential AI information from the company network to a personal Google Cloud account. At the time of the superseding indictment in February 2025, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California counted the uploaded material as "more than 1,000 unique files." The material included hardware and software of Google's supercomputing data centers used to train and run large AI models, the architecture and functionality of Google's custom-designed Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chips and systems, and graphics processing unit (GPU) systems. It also included software that ties thousands of chips into a single supercomputer and material on Google's in-house SmartNIC (network interface card) used for high-speed communication in AI supercomputers.

According to the court's Aug. 20 order, Ding took screenshots of Google documents, pasted them into Apple Notes on his company MacBook, converted them to PDFs and uploaded them to his personal account. The court found this method made it easier to evade Google's detection than direct uploads. Ding downloaded the material to his personal laptop in mid-December 2023, and Google cut off his system access late that month after learning he had been seeking investors for a Chinese AI company. According to the Justice Department, Ding resigned from Google less than two weeks after downloading the material.

The Justice Department said Ding told potential investors he could replicate and modify Google's technology to build an AI supercomputer. Applying to a government-sponsored talent program in Shanghai in late 2023, Ding wrote that he would "help China to have computing power infrastructure capabilities that are on par with the international level." John A. Eisenberg, assistant attorney general for national security, said after the verdict: "Ding abused his privileged access to steal AI trade secrets while pursuing PRC government-aligned ventures."

Court found Ding took 5 million yuan from Qiji Chuangtan in exchange for 7% stake

The relationship between Qiji Chuangtan and Ding is laid out in detail in the court orders. According to Judge Vince Chhabria's Aug. 20 order, Ding secretly worked for Chinese private technology company Rongshu starting in 2022 while employed at Google. Ding and Rongshu CEO Yuan Ye prepared what would become Zhisuan in early 2023, and by March of that year were already working with I&R Capital, a Chinese consulting firm that helps startups raise investment. According to the court's June 29 order, the company was named Zhisuan in April 2023.

Ding applied to the Qiji Chuangtan program in May 2023 and was accepted in August. According to the court orders, his participation came with 5 million yuan (about $700,000) in private funding provided by Qiji Chuangtan's venture arm in exchange for a 7% stake in Zhisuan. Ding presented Zhisuan to other private investors at a Qiji Chuangtan event in November 2023. In a Qiji Chuangtan investor presentation in late November, he touted ties to the Industrial Innovation Park and the Tianfu Research Institute and included "supercomputing centers" in a list of "government agencies" that "will be our customers." The court described the Industrial Innovation Park as a Chinese government agency created to promote technology investment and the Tianfu Research Institute as a university controlled by the Chinese government.

The court found that Ding had no actual product to offer. According to the order, Ding made a video of himself running software tests on Google's GPU systems to make it appear that the GPUs in "his" product were working properly. The court said: "In short, Ding had no product; he was just pretending he had one."

Seven economic espionage counts overturned by August acquittal

Chhabria on Aug. 20 granted Ding's motion and entered a judgment of acquittal on the seven economic espionage counts. Economic espionage requires prosecutors to prove that the defendant intended or knew, at the time of taking the material, that the act would benefit a foreign government. The court found that the intent evidence offered by prosecutors was concentrated in September through December 2023, about five months after the last upload (April 17, 2023) and well over a year after the first. The court said "intent to start a private company in China is not enough." The order also included the finding that "MiraclePlus is a private entity."

The court also rejected an alternative theory based on the December 2023 download, which prosecutors raised only after the trial, saying it had never been presented to the jury. It chose acquittal rather than a new trial on the grounds that the double jeopardy bar prohibits retrying him on a new theory.

The convictions on the seven counts of theft of trade secrets stand. In its June 29 order, the court said prosecutors had presented "overwhelming evidence" that Ding intended to benefit himself and Zhisuan, and denied his motions for acquittal or a new trial on those counts. The conviction cited in the State Department's statement that day also refers to the seven counts of theft of trade secrets on which the jury found Ding guilty in January 2026. PAIPA's designation criteria turn not on intent to benefit a foreign government but on whether a person engaged in or benefited from theft of trade secrets.

Sources (KST)

• U.S. State Department, Office of the Spokesperson press statement · 2026-10-19 (U.S. Eastern), page updated 2026-10-19 23:45 KST · Imposing Sanctions to Protect Americans from Intellectual Property Theft · https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/imposing-sanctions-to-protect-americans-from-intellectual-property-theft/
• U.S. State Department, Office of the Spokesperson fact sheet · 2026-10-19 (U.S. Eastern) · Imposing Sanctions to Protect Americans from Intellectual Property Theft (Fact Sheet) · https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/10/imposing-sanctions-to-protect-americans-from-intellectual-property-theft-fact-sheet/
• U.S. Treasury Department, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) · 2026-10-19 (U.S. Eastern) · PAIPA designations and issuance of general licenses · https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20261019
• OFAC · 2026-10-19 · PAIPA General License No. 1 · https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/937256/download?inline
• OFAC · 2026-10-19 · PAIPA General License No. 2 · https://ofac.treasury.gov/media/937261/download?inline
• U.S. Public Law 117-336 · signed 2023-01-05 · Protecting American Intellectual Property Act of 2022 · https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-117publ336/html/PLAW-117publ336.htm
• U.S. Justice Department · 2026-01-30 (U.S. Eastern) · Former Google Engineer Found Guilty of Economic Espionage and Theft of Confidential AI Technology · https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-google-engineer-found-guilty-economic-espionage-and-theft-confidential-ai-technology
• U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California · 2025-02-04 (U.S. Eastern) · Superseding Indictment Charges Chinese National In Relation To Alleged Plan To Steal Proprietary AI Technology · https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndca/pr/superseding-indictment-charges-chinese-national-relation-alleged-plan-steal
• U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · 2026-06-29 · USA v. Ding (3:24-cr-00141), order on motions for judgment of acquittal or new trial · https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_24-cr-00141/pdf/USCOURTS-cand-3_24-cr-00141-5.pdf
• U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California · 2026-08-20 · USA v. Ding (3:24-cr-00141), order of acquittal on economic espionage counts · https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-cand-3_24-cr-00141/pdf/USCOURTS-cand-3_24-cr-00141-6.pdf
• Qiji Chuangtan (MiraclePlus) official website · checked 2026-10-20 · https://www.miracleplus.com/cn/