US federal agents have arrested Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national and former OpenAI engineer, on charges of secretly planting a recording device in an executive conference room at the artificial intelligence company, the Justice Department said Tuesday, raising fresh concerns about the security of sensitive corporate communications and the potential misuse of access to advanced AI research.
According to the Justice Department, OpenAI discovered the device on September 30, plugged into a USB port on the back of a television in an executive conference room at one of its San Francisco buildings.
The FBI complaint alleges that the thumb-sized device, equipped with a microphone and capable of connecting to a camera, had been concealed in toilet paper and installed on or around September 28.
Investigators said the device's stored data was encrypted and inaccessible, and later found a similar customized recording device in Alfozan's personal bag.
Alfozan had worked as an engineer at OpenAI since July 2025, giving him access to the company's workplace before the alleged incident.
OpenAI said it used its internal AI models to identify the individual allegedly responsible for planting the device and trace its origins.
The company also said it had evidence that the employee intended to install additional recording devices in sensitive areas of its offices to secretly capture meetings, suggesting the alleged operation may not have been limited to a single device.
“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,” OpenAI said in a post on X.
The company referred the matter to the FBI, which is continuing its investigation.
“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.
According to the FBI complaint, Alfozan also used an AI productivity agent to seek information about meeting-room calendars and capabilities for approximately a month, through September 16.
Alfozan has been a legal permanent resident of the United States since September 2020.
If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.
A LinkedIn profile indicated that Alfozan studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley, and previously worked at Meta and Microsoft.
The case places renewed scrutiny on the safeguards surrounding access to sensitive AI facilities, particularly as companies compete to develop technologies with potentially far-reaching economic and strategic implications.
Separately, 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 discussions were ongoing and could fall apart, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.
OpenAI and Trail of Bits did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The latest allegations also come amid internal tensions at OpenAI over the handling of sensitive information and the company's research culture.
OpenAI said Friday that it had fired three researchers — Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak and Mikita Balesni — after an investigation found they had violated company policies on handling sensitive information.
The researchers subsequently published a letter describing the circumstances of their dismissals and arguing that the abrupt firings could create uncertainty among employees and undermine a culture in which researchers felt able to raise safety concerns.