Weibao Wang

Dr. Weibao Wang (Chinese: 王伟宝, born April 1988) is a former software engineer of Apple Inc. He is federally charged with stealing trade secrets related to Apple's electric car project.

Early life and education
Wang is a native of, China. He studied business administration and management at, where he received a bachelor's degree in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering in 2011. In 2016, he received a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from in. During his studies at Purdue, Wang also worked as a research assistant for in  from September 2010 to March 2011.

Career
Prior to completing his post-graduate studies, Wang was an intern at in 2011. He also worked on multi-sensor visual recognition as a system engineering intern at ' Perception and Analytics Lab in 2014.

Apple Inc.
Wang was hired by Apple in March 2016 to work on their electric car project while residing in Mountain View, California. He received in-person secrecy training on handling confidential materials. Wang's work as a tech lead on the project was focused on the development of computerized visual recognition. As a member of the Annotation Team, he was granted access to databases only available to a small percentage of Apple employees.

In November 2017, Wang allegedly accepted a U.S.-based job from a Chinese company that was also developing self-driving automobiles. However, according to court documents, Wang allegedly did not inform Apple of this arrangement for over 4 months. On his last day at Apple on April 16, 2018, the company discovered that Wang had allegedly been accessing large amounts of proprietary data.

After Apple
After leaving Apple, Wang co-founded Singularity.AI and became the VP of technology, focused on development of artificial intelligence for the medical industry. In March 2020, he became the chief technology officer of Neolithic, a Chinese startup developing unmanned delivery vehicles.

In August 2021, Wang joined Jidu Auto Company, a subsidiary of Chinese technology conglomerate that is developing self-driving automobiles co-funded by. There, he became the head of autonomous driving. Wang stated that the ultimate competitor in the field would be Apple.

Investigation
On June 27, 2018, federal investigators came to Wang's home in Mountain View to search the premises and reportedly found "large quantities" of confidential data, including source code from Apple. Wang reportedly promised to law enforcement officers that he would not leave the area. However, he allegedly fled on a one-way flight from San Francisco to, China later that same evening.

Federal charges
Wang was charged in the with stealing or attempting to steal six categories of trade secrets, with each offense carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a 250,000 fine.