Saudi OpenAI Engineer Arrested for Bugging San Francisco Conference Room
FBI arrests Saudi national Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, for allegedly planting a hidden recording device in an OpenAI executive conference room in San Francisco.
Saudi engineer at OpenAI charged with planting hidden recording device in SF office
The FBI arrested a Saudi national employed as an engineer at OpenAI after he allegedly concealed a recording device inside an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco office, france24.com reports.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, who joined OpenAI in July 2025, was taken into custody on 9 October. The US Justice Department said Alfozan wrapped a USB device in toilet paper and inserted it into a television set located in a restricted executive conference room, to which he had no authorised access.
"We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices," OpenAI told AFP. "We referred the matter to the FBI."
OpenAI's security team discovered the device late last month. A second device was subsequently found when security personnel searched an unattended bag belonging to Alfozan.
Security footage captured Alfozan near the restricted conference room on multiple occasions without authorisation, and later showed him inside the room appearing to look behind the television where the device had been placed. He had also used a company productivity tool to search for information about OpenAI's office buildings, meeting rooms, calendars, schedules, and staff locations, according to the Justice Department. A chatbot account linked to Alfozan's spouse reportedly contained queries relating to remote audio recording and encrypting memory cards.
OpenAI said it had found no indication that Alfozan had "inappropriately accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code, or customer data" at this stage. It remained unclear what information, if any, the device had managed to collect.
The Justice Department charged Alfozan with "using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications." The charge carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He is expected to appear before a federal court on 19 October.
The Justice Department did not accuse Alfozan personally, nor Saudi Arabia — a close US ally — of conducting espionage.
Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton linked the arrest to broader concerns about technology security. "This serious situation underscores why winning the global superintelligence race is a national security prerogative," Clayton said in a statement. "The intelligence community remains committed to safeguarding America's cutting-edge intellectual property from foreign threats," he added.
The case emerges amid an intensifying global competition in artificial intelligence. The Trump administration has pushed to rebrand AI development as the race for "superintelligence." Saudi Arabia's state-backed AI firm Humain invested $3 billion in Elon Musk's xAI shortly before SpaceX acquired that AI division in February, with the combined entity — now known as SpaceXAI — announcing plans to build a 500-megawatt data centre in Saudi Arabia in partnership with Humain.
Prior to his role at OpenAI, Alfozan had worked at Meta, an AI startup, and a venture capital firm, according to a LinkedIn profile matching his name and résumé. He also studied at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The arrest draws comparisons to a 2022 case in which former Twitter employee Ahmad Abouammo was found guilty of spying on behalf of Saudi officials seeking to identify critics of the kingdom on the platform.
Source: Times of Malta