OpenAI Employee Arrested for Allegedly Planting Hidden Recorder in Executive Conference Room

A Saudi National and employee of OpenAI has been arrested for allegedly planting a hidden recording device in an executive conference room at the company's San Francisco offices to covertly record sensitive conversations.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35, has been charged with using or endeavoring to use an electronic, mechanical, or other device to intercept oral communications. He was arrested by authorities on October 9, 2026, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said. Alfozan had been employed at OpenAI since July 2025, working as an engineering lead. He has since been terminated.

According to Alfozan's LinkedIn profile, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a master's in data science in 2025. He was previously employed at Meta as a senior systems engineer and went on to become the founding engineer at Nash.

"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," Kash Patel, Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), said in a statement.

"Protecting American SI [super intelligence] innovation is essential to safeguarding our nation's economic strength and national security, and the FBI views that mission as one of our highest counterintelligence priorities."