A Chinese company that financially supported a convicted thief of Google’s artificial intelligence technology has its origins in a program initiated by Sam Altman.
The U.S. State Department announced sanctions on Monday against Beijing-based MiraclePlus and four associated entities, tied to former Google engineer Linwei Ding, who was found guilty earlier this year of stealing the company’s AI trade secrets, as stated in a department announcement. MiraclePlus has roots in a Chinese initiative launched by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in 2018, while he was at Y Combinator, as reported by Bloomberg.
Ding established Shanghai Zhisuan Technology in 2023, which is among the sanctioned entities. He sought backing from MiraclePlus when applying to its program, according to the State Department.
The department highlighted that Ding was “promoting his familiarity with Google’s technology and internal systems, suggesting that Zhisuan could duplicate Google’s SI infrastructure technology.”
Accepted into MiraclePlus’s program in August 2023, Ding received about $700,000 in return for a minor stake in his company, as outlined in a federal court document from August 20.
Lu Qi, a former executive at Microsoft and Baidu, was brought on by Altman to head YC China and later founded MiraclePlus with the program’s former team after Y Combinator closed it in 2019, according to TechCrunch.
However, Lu was not among those sanctioned by the State Department, as noted in the fact sheet.
In an August blog post for Y Combinator, Altman expressed enthusiasm about Qi Lu joining to lead YC China, mentioning that he had been trying to recruit Lu for years because of his impressive technological skills.
According to a Y Combinator spokesperson, “Y Combinator has no affiliation with MiraclePlus or Lu Qi.” Altman left his role as president of Y Combinator in 2019 to concentrate on OpenAI, as reported by Axios.
Neither the State Department, MiraclePlus, nor OpenAI responded to inquiries from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Ding was convicted by a federal jury on January 29 of multiple counts of economic espionage and theft of trade secrets. He was found guilty of stealing over 2,000 confidential pages related to Google AI, which he reportedly stored in a personal cloud account for the benefit of China.
While he was acquitted of espionage charges in August due to insufficient evidence linking the theft to the Chinese government, his convictions for trade secret theft still stood, according to the federal court order.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott remarked in a Monday press release that this theft poses a significant threat to U.S. economic and national security interests.
