By Amrith Ramkumar and Katherine Blunt

A former Google employee accused of stealing trade secrets related to the company's Pixel phones was indicted Thursday, adding to cases highlighting the security threats companies face in an era of rapidly evolving technology.

The employee, who worked as a Google hardware engineer from 2019 to 2023, was charged with six theft-related charges. Her husband and sister were indicted on similar charges after allegedly working with her to steal trade secrets from Google and two other tech companies. The defendants, from Iran, had pursued advanced degrees in the U.S. and careers in tech.

The Google case is the third high-profile incident in recent years involving misappropriation of the company's trade secrets. A former software engineer was recently convicted by a federal jury of stealing information about the company's artificial-intelligence chips in 2022 and 2023 to benefit China. The Justice Department said that case marked the first conviction on economic-espionage charges related to AI. In late 2024, a judge mandated that a former engineer stop posting photos of internal documents about coming Pixel chips.

The incidents highlight the value of sensitive information needed to make the chips and devices powering the modern economy. Secrets behind critical technology can be worth billions of dollars, making them an attractive target. AI is adding to the challenge by making trade secrets more lucrative and giving thieves a new tool to deploy in their heists.

In response, companies are tightening their security protocols, changes that challenge the open corporate culture many Silicon Valley companies prize.

"Our threat model is changing in such a way that we're going to move more in real time and move the bar a little further," Heather Adkins, Google's vice president of security engineering, said in an interview. "Those open environments will become more constrained." The company said its controls have allowed thieves to be caught and brought to justice.

Other tech companies face similar challenges. Apple this past summer sued former engineers who are accused of taking trade secrets about the Apple Watch and Vision Pro headset. Elon Musk's xAI is suing a former engineer who allegedly stole secrets about its Grok chatbot before selling millions of dollars of stock and joining a competitor.

There were around 1,500 federal trade secrets cases filed in the U.S. last year, up 20% from the previous year and the highest figure in at least a decade, according to the data provider Lex Machina.

"It seems to be getting worse in terms of the economic impact," said Justin Sherman, chief executive of Global Cyber Strategies, a research and advisory firm. "This is definitely something where the threat is top of mind."

Google, whose parent is Alphabet, has a range of security controls at its disposal, including restricting badge access for employees, requiring computers to be used for certain purposes, and making engineers do their most sensitive work in rooms where outside computers and phones aren't allowed. This past summer, Google said in an email to employees that it was restricting the use of third-party applications and AI systems.

"Many people would imagine it couldn't happen at Google," said Lee-Anne Mulholland, the company's global head of regulatory affairs. "We come at it from the perspective that anything can happen, so we have to protect from it before it does."

Apple uses tools to limit who has access to sensitive information, the company said in a lawsuit alleging that a former engineer stole Apple Watch information to take to a Chinese competitor.

Around eight years ago, a former Apple employee was apprehended by federal agents just before boarding a flight to Beijing with secrets tied to the company's autonomous-driving program. Dramatic arrests are common in trade-secrets cases.

Linwei Ding, the former Google employee recently convicted of stealing sensitive information, had booked a flight to return to China when Google notified authorities so they could charge him before he left the country. Ding downloaded documents to his personal Google account and founded his own tech company in China to use the information.

Another Google employee had been using Ding's badge to come to the office so it looked as though he was still in the U.S. when he had spent months in China. Ding had pleaded not guilty. He intends to file a motion for a new trial, his lawyer said.

Around the same time, a different Google engineer in India was taking photos of information on his computer detailing a next-generation chip going in Google's Pixel phones. He moved to the U.S. to start a Ph.D. program in August 2024, then started posting photos of company presentations and details about Pixel components on social media.

A Texas judge eventually granted a permanent injunction mandating that the engineer delete and stop publishing Google secrets.

Write to Amrith Ramkumar at amrith.ramkumar@wsj.com and Katherine Blunt at katherine.blunt@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 19, 2026 21:56 ET (02:56 GMT)

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