Former Apple engineer Xiaolang Zhang has been sentenced to 120 days in prison and fined $146,984 for stealing information related to the company’s ‘Project Titan’ autonomous car efforts. Court documents reveal the details of his sentencing, which also include a three-year supervised release after completing his jail term.
Zhang, who initially faced up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine, pleaded guilty to the theft, which involved transferring a 25-page document containing engineering schematics of the proposed vehicle’s circuit board to his wife’s laptop. He also saved technical manuals describing the vehicle’s prototype to the same laptop and stole circuit boards and Linux servers from Apple’s development labs.
The former engineer was arrested in July 2018 at the San Jose International Airport while attempting to board a flight to China. Despite initially pleading not guilty, Zhang changed his plea to guilty in August 2022.
The theft came to light after Zhang resigned from Apple and informed the company in his resignation letter that he was joining XPeng Motors in China, a company also working on self-driving technology. Apple conducted an investigation, during which surveillance footage showed Zhang taking hardware from the company’s labs and transferring data to his wife’s computer, ultimately leading to the lawsuit.
Zhang is expected to surrender by June 19 and will be sent to a minimum-security facility close to his home in San Jose, California, after which he will serve his three-year supervised release.
