Washington: The arrest comes after revelations that an employee from China, Linwei Ding, worked clandestinely with a Chinese company while employed at Google, stealing the search giant's artificial intelligence technology to establish a startup in China with their assistance.

Ding, who joined Google in 2019 and worked at the company's California office, began engaging in illicit activities two years ago. During his tenure, he gathered sensitive information from the company's supercomputing data centers, uploading hundreds of files containing these details to his personal Google Cloud account.

Within weeks of the theft, a technology startup in China appointed Ding as its chief technology officer. Simultaneously, while working at Google, Ding held a prominent position in the Chinese company, attending investor meetings and even founding a startup in China focused on training AI models using supercomputing chips.

Ding continued his dual employment for nearly two years, resigning from Google in December of the previous year once his activities came to light. Subsequent internal investigations by Google revealed that Ding had pilfered crucial AI information from the company. Following the findings, a complaint was filed against him, leading to his arrest on Wednesday. Ding faces four criminal charges, with each count carrying a potential prison sentence of up to 10 years.