The OpenAI engineer who was fired after being accused this week of bugging the AI giant’s conference room was arrested by the FBI just three days before his one-way flight to Saudi Arabia took off, according to court documents.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, said he helped advise Saudi government agencies on technology and gushed in a recent podcast interview about meeting then-deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during the prince’s 2016 visit to Silicon Valley.
Alfozan said he was seeking advice on whether or not to return to his homeland. In response, the prince advised young Saudis in Silicon Valley to hone their skills at leading tech companies before bringing that expertise home, Alfozan said in an Arabic podcast interview last month.
“You learn from the source and then, God willing, you take that experience and knowledge back to your country,” Alfozan said.
Alfozan – who had also worked at Meta and at a startup backed by Andreessen Horowitz – was listed as a venture partner at RAED Ventures in Riyadh alongside Prince Khalid bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family.
The podcast’s revelations come this week as OpenAI discovered a “clandestine audio recording device” inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in a conference room – wrapped in toilet paper in an attempt to conceal the device, according to a complaint filed by federal prosecutors.
The alleged espionage highlights the relentless global race by governments to develop advanced AI. OpenAI competes with other leading AI labs, including Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI, as well as many Chinese companies, and the US government has declared that developing the most elite AI tools is a national security imperative.
“This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology,” said U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California Craig Missakian. “For us, it’s a matter of national security.”
William Pernik, an attorney representing Alfozan, said his client was charged with violating a federal registration law, “not stealing trade secrets or working as a foreign agent,” and asked that “everyone withhold judgment until all the facts are known.”
Alfozan “came to this country years ago as a young person with a dream,” Pernik said. “He spent years studying, working and contributing to a world-dominating American technology sector, a sector built largely by immigrants like him. »
A photo in the court document shows an object oddly placed on the back of a TV in an OpenAI conference room. Another photo shows the alleged device branded as Seeed Studio, a company that appears to offer AI recording products.
The meetings in this conference room apparently involved high-level discussions about the company’s confidential projects, such as proprietary research, OpenAI’s technical capabilities, its government relationships and much more.
The company led by Sam Altman traced the device to Alfozan. Footage shows Alfozan appearing several times near the conference room, even though he had no authority to access the room or participate in those meetings, the Justice Department said in its complaint.
Alfozan also used chatbots to plan the alleged recording efforts, inquiring about OpenAI building addresses, meeting room capacities and schedules, federal prosecutors allege.
He even requested information on the locations of “officers and executives,” according to the complaint.
Another chatbot account associated with his wife allegedly included queries about ways to install and hide audio recording devices.
On October 5, a photo allegedly showed Alfozan entering the conference room to get a glimpse of the recording device. Around the same time, OpenAI security officers found a similar recording device in Alfozan’s unattended bag, the DOJ said.
OpenAI fired Alfozan earlier this week after working for the San Francisco-based AI company since July 2025. Alfozan studied computer science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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