Ex-Apple employee accused of stealing secrets is Jidu Automotive exec
Visitors look at a Jidu Robo-01 electric SUV during the 20th Guangzhou International Automobile Exhibition at Canton Fair Complex on Dec. 30, 2022 in Guangzhou, China.
On Tuesday, the U.S. government accused a former Apple employee, Weibao Wang, of stealing trade secrets from the company's self-driving car division, including the entirety of Apple's "autonomous" source code.
The U.S. government did not identify in the charging documents who Wang works for now, but according to Reuters and several company profiles, Wang is an executive at Jidu, an electric vehicle joint venture between Chinese internet company Baidu and Chinese car maker Geely.
The U.S. government is concerned that Beijing is using various tactics to steal proprietary information from American companies, including "corrupting insiders." Tuesday's announcement was part of a Department of Justice task force designed to "counter efforts by hostile nation-states to illicitly acquire sensitive U.S technology."
Federal prosecutors have accused Wang of agreeing to work for a U.S. subsidiary of a Chinese automaker months before he left Apple in 2018, and of stealing privileged information dealing with Apple's autonomous systems development, allegedly to give to an unnamed Chinese company.
According to a since-deleted LinkedIn profile that appeared in a Chinese-language interview, after Wang left Apple he began working at a health care artificial intelligence firm called Singularity.AI, which has offices in California and China. Following that, he worked as chief technology officer at Neolix, a Chinese self-driving car company. In 2021, Wang joined Jidu to run the company's intelligent-driving efforts.
In June 2018, law enforcement officials searched Wang's apartment on Apple's suspicions that he had taken internal company files. Wang purchased a ticket and flew to China the same day, according to Tuesday's filing. The charges suggest Wang can no longer travel to the U.S. without risking arrest.
Wang is the third former Apple employee from China to be accused of stealing trade secrets from Apple's self-driving car division. Xiaolang Zhang, who worked at Apple around the same time as Wang, pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Apple in August. And ex-Apple employee Jizhong Chen is also facing charges, but a trial date for his case has yet to be set.
Neither Zhang nor Chen were able to leave the country before they were arrested separately in 2018 and 2019, and Apple lawyers said in 2019 they were worried that they would flee to China.
Apple has reportedly been working on a self-driving car since at least 2015, although it has never discussed its goals or plans publicly and no car has been announced. The most public sign of Apple's efforts is a fleet of cars with sensors for gathering data, which can be spotted driving around some California neighborhoods.
In February, Jidu confirmed plans to deliver its first car this year, and that it will be using ChatGPT-like technology in its vehicles.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment. An Apple representative declined to comment. Baidu and the FBI's San Francisco field office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Source: CNBC
