Saudi national arrested after allegedly hiding recording device in OpenAI office

An OpenAI employee from Saudi Arabia has been arrested after allegedly hiding a recording device in the company’s offices, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Tuesday.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national who had worked as an engineer at OpenAI since last July, was charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept oral communications.

The recording device was discovered at one of the firm’s San Francisco offices in late September, according to the DOJ. It was plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room and covered in toilet paper.

“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 a post on the social platform X.

“We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest,” they continued. “The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work.”

In the days before the device was found, video surveillance footage showed Alfozan near the conference room, despite having no authority to access or participate in meetings there, the DOJ said.

He also allegedly asked a productivity tool about OpenAI’s building addresses, meeting rooms, calendars and the locations of executives, while a chatbot linked to Alfozan’s spouse inquired about building, installing and remotely accessing a device.

OpenAI security personnel found another recording device when they searched Alfozan’s bag earlier this month.

The company said they currently have “no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data.” They also noted that the employee was fired.

“The Bay Area and Silicon Valley lead the world in developing tomorrow’s technology, and our Office will continue to stand at the forefront of protecting that American innovation,” Craig Missakian, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said in a statement. “For us it is a matter of national security.”