Technology

Chinese Firms That Cashed In On Stolen Google AI Secrets Has Roots In Sam Altman’s Overseas Venture

Grendelkhan/Wikimedia Commons

A Chinese firm that bankrolled a convicted Google artificial intelligence thief grew out of a program launched by Sam Altman.

The State Department imposed sanctions on Beijing-based MiraclePlus and four related entities Monday over their ties to former Google engineer Linwei Ding, who was convicted of stealing the company’s AI trade secrets in January, according to a department statement. MiraclePlus traces back to a Chinese program that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman launched while running Y Combinator in 2018, Bloomberg reported.

Ding founded Shanghai Zhisuan Technology, which is among those sanctioned by the department, in 2023, and later sought funding from MiraclePlus in his application into its program, the department stated.

Ding was “touting his experience with and knowledge of Google’s technology and internal systems and claimed that Zhisuan could replicate Google’s SI infrastructure technology,” the department stated.

MiraclePlus accepted Ding into its program in Aug. 2023 and invested about $700,000 in exchange for a small ownership stake in the company, according to an Aug. 20 federal court order.

Lu Qi, a former Microsoft and Baidu executive whom Altman hired to run YC China, formed MiraclePlus with the program’s former team after Y Combinator shut it down in 2019, TechCrunch reported.

Lu was not among those sanctioned Monday, according to the department’s fact sheet.

“I am delighted to announce that Qi Lu is joining YC to launch and run YC China. I have been trying to recruit Qi for many years — he is one of the most impressive technologists I know,” Altman wrote in an Aug. 14 blog post for Y Combinator.

“Y Combinator has no affiliation with MiraclePlus or Lu Qi,” a Y Combinator spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Altman stepped down as Y Combinator’s president in 2019 to focus on OpenAI, Axios reported.

The State Department, MiraclePlus and OpenAI each did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

A federal jury found Ding guilty on seven charges of economic espionage and seven more charges for trade secret theft, the Justice Department announced on Jan. 29. Ding had stolen more than 2,000 confidential pages of Google AI files, which he allegedly placed in a personal cloud account to help China.

Ding was acquitted on the espionage charges on Aug. 20 due to lack of evidence that he took the files for the Chinese government, but his seven theft-of-trade secrets convictions remained, according to the federal court order.

“This theft of trade secrets is a serious threat to U.S. economic, foreign policy, and national security interests,” State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott said in a Monday press statement.