Federal authorities arrested a Saudi national employed at OpenAI and charged him with planting a recording device in a company’s executive conference room, the Department of Justice announced Tuesday.
On or around Sept. 30, OpenAI discovered a sophisticated recording device inserted into the back of a television in an executive conference room located in one of its San Francisco offices. The company determined that the device was installed approximately a couple days prior, concealed in toilet paper. The contents of the device were encrypted, according to the DOJ.
The Department of Justice said in a news release that the employee, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, was arrested Friday and appeared in federal court Tuesday. OpenAI confirmed the incident on social media and said that it was supporting the FBI’s investigation.
“We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier,” OpenAI said in its statement. “At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data.”
Alfozan used a “productivity tool” to inquire about the company’s meeting rooms, calendars, and “leadership and exec” locations, according to OpenAI’s complaint to the DOJ. A chatbot account associated with his spouse also indicated that the user submitted prompts in September relating to installing and remote accessing a recording device.
The DOJ said that CCTV footage showed Alfozan, who had been employed as an engineer by OpenAI since July 2025, near and inside the conference room on multiple occasions before the device was discovered. Meetings in the conference room “frequently involved discussions of highly confidential technical, commercial, and strategic information, including proprietary research, product plans, and business-development opportunities,” according to the complaint.
The company also discovered another recording device in one of Alfozan’s bags left in the office.
“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” OpenAI said. “Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.”
The Saudi national, who has since been fired by OpenAI, faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release if convicted, according to the DOJ.
“For us it is a matter of national security,” U.S. Attorney Craig H. Missakian for the Northern District of California said in a statement. “This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology, as alleged in the complaint.”