By Michael Elkins
Chinese electric automaker Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV) issued a statement on Tuesday in response to Apple's (NASDAQ:AAPL) lawsuit against a former employee for stealing trade secrets, saying the company had nothing to do with it.
"Today, we learned from the media about the latest developments in the case of former Apple employee Zhang Xiaolang's suspicion of stealing Apple's trade secrets. It has been more than four years since the incident, and XPeng is not aware of the specific circumstances of the situation and has not been involved in the follow-up investigation by the US judiciary," XPeng said on Weibo.
Zhang Xiaolang joined Apple in December 2015, designing and testing circuit boards to analyze sensor data. In April 2018, Zhang returned to China for paternity leave. When he returned to California, Zhang offered to leave the job because he had to take care of his sick mother, and he told his boss that he would join XPeng in China.
After Zhang returned his company-issued phones and laptop, Apple’s technical security team found that Zhang searched and downloaded some confidential data. Zhang was also photographed allegedly trying to dismantle test circuit boards and Linux servers and take them away.
Zhang was arrested by the FBI in 2018 during a security check at the San Jose Airport.