The U.S. State Department on October 19 designated five Chinese entities under the Protecting American Intellectual Property Act for their connection to the theft of Google trade secrets3.
The sanctioned entities are Shanghai Zhisuan Technology Co Ltd (Zhisuan), the venture capital firm MiraclePlus, two VC funds operated by MiraclePlus, and one corporate management entity2. All five face asset freezes, bans on transactions with U.S. persons and entities, and restrictions on financial services and foreign exchange licenses.
Zhisuan and the stolen files
Zhisuan was founded in 2023 by Linwei Ding, a former Google software engineer arrested in the United States in 2024. Ding is accused of transferring more than 1,000 confidential files related to supercomputing, including material on Google's Tensor Processing Units, to his personal cloud account while employed at Google. TPUs are AI chips Google developed to compete with Nvidia's graphics processing units.
According to the State Department fact sheet, Zhisuan was marketed as capable of developing a software platform that could accelerate machine learning workloads, including training large superintelligence models powered by supercomputing chips. Ding applied to MiraclePlus on behalf of Zhisuan, claiming the startup could replicate Google's superintelligence infrastructure technology.
MiraclePlus's role
MiraclePlus, a China-based venture capital firm that invests primarily in Chinese tech startups, provided seed capital to Zhisuan in exchange for an ownership stake. The firm holds two startup camps a year in which selected companies can solicit additional funding from other investors. Bloomberg reported that MiraclePlus was founded by Lu Qi, a former Microsoft AI executive1.
Ding used the stage MiraclePlus provided to present Zhisuan, touting his connection to Google technology and his ability to replicate it to fit China's national conditions, the State Department said.
ANALYSIS The designations extend U.S. enforcement beyond the individual accused of theft to the venture infrastructure that funded and showcased the resulting startup, a step that puts other Chinese incubators and seed funds on notice when evaluating founders with recent tenure at major U.S. AI labs.
The South China Morning Post first reported the sanctions, per the Seoul Economic Daily's account. The State Department's fact sheet frames the action as part of a broader effort to protect American intellectual property, as advanced technology is increasingly treated as a security matter rather than an industrial asset.