OpenAI Says Staffer Arrested for Hidden Recording Device in Office

An employee at OpenAI has been arrested and charged with using a hidden recording device in the company’s office, according to statements from the artificial intelligence company and the US Justice Department.

Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi Arabian national, was arrested on October 9, more than a week after staffers at OpenAI discovered an audio recording device in the back of a television in an executive conference room, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. Alfozan is currently in federal custody.

Alfozan had started at OpenAI in July 2025 and worked on the company’s product team, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity as the information is not public.

The company said it used its AI models to understand the planted device and identify who had placed it in its office. The worker has since been fired, OpenAI said.

The incident is poised to heighten concerns about the security at top tech companies at a moment when nations are competing aggressively to develop more powerful AI systems.

“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data,” the company posted on social platform X on Tuesday.

OpenAI said it alerted the FBI, which made the arrest, and that its investigation is still ongoing.