FBI arrests Saudi OpenAI engineer over covert recording device, DOJ says

U.S. federal agents have arrested a Saudi national who was an OpenAI engineer and charged him with installing a hidden audio recording device in an executive conference room at the AI company, the Justice Department said on Tuesday.

The case highlights ​growing security concerns around sensitive AI research as companies and governments compete fiercely for the talent and technology that ‌could confer economic ‌and strategic advantages.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, had worked as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, ​the Justice Department said in a statement. An email sent to an address associated with that name did not elicit a response, and it was not immediately clear who his lawyer was.

OpenAI discovered the recording device plugged into a USB port on ⁠the back of a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings on Sept. 30, according to the ⁠department.

The thumb-sized device, which had a microphone and could connect to a camera, was concealed in toilet paper, according to an FBI complaint. It was installed on or about Sept. 28, while its stored data ​was encrypted and inaccessible. Investigators later found a similar ⁠customized device in Alfozan’s personal bag.

OpenAI said in a post on X that it used its internal AI models to identify the person responsible for planting the device and trace ⁠its origins.

The company said it ​had evidence that the employee intended to place additional recording devices in sensitive ​areas of its offices to secretly record meetings.

“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately ​accessing or exfiltrating ‌model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated,” the company said.

OpenAI referred the matter to the FBI, which is continuing to investigate. The Saudi embassy in the United States did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Abdulrahman Alfozan allegedly concealed a covert recording device inside his employer’s executive conference room to secretly capture ‌sensitive communications about the company’s super intelligence technology,” FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement.

Alfozan also used an AI productivity agent to seek information about meeting-room calendars and capabilities for about a month through Sept. 16, according to the FBI complaint. He has been a legal permanent resident of the U.S. since September 2020.

If convicted, Alfozan faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and ​three ​years of supervised release.

A LinkedIn profile showed that Alfozan studied at the Massachusetts Institute of ​Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. He previously worked at Meta and Microsoft, it said.

The details ⁠mentioned in his LinkedIn profile could not be independently verified.

Separately, technology and business news website The Information reported that OpenAI was in early talks to acquire Trail of Bits, a startup that identifies and fixes vulnerabilities in open-source software. The talks are ongoing and could fall apart, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

OpenAI and Trail of Bits did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

OpenAI ​said on Friday it fired three researchers after an investigation found they had violated company policies on handling sensitive information.

The researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — had published a letter detailing the circumstances of their dismissal and arguing that the abrupt firings could create uncertainty among employees and undermine a culture in which researchers could raise safety concerns.