information about Project Titan. Chen, a Chinese national, has pleaded not guilty.

information about Project Titan. Chen, a Chinese national, has pleaded not guilty.

Two former Apple – engineers from Project Titan accused of theft

San Francisco, Aug. 23, 2022

A former Apple engineer has pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets from Apple’s autonomous vehicle project.

In 2018, Zhang Xiaolang was charged by the FBI and arrested at an airport while trying to board a one-way flight to China.

Apple first hired Zhang in 2015 for its ongoing self-driving car project, known as Project Titan. As a hardware engineer on the compute team, he had access to confidential internal Apple databases. In 2018, he resigned from Apple to work for Chinese electric car maker XPeng.

Before his departure, prosecutors accused Zhang of downloading a 25-page document from Apple onto his wife’s computer. The documents allegedly contained proprietary technical manuals and schematic drawings of a circuit board for the Apple vehicle.

Zhang initially pleaded not guilty, but has agreed to a plea bargain, which is still under seal. He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine at sentencing set for Nov. 14.

Another former Apple engineer, Jizhong Chen, has also been charged with stealing proprietary