The OpenAI engineer who was fired after being charged this week with bugging a convention room at the AI giant and was nabbed by the FBI only three days before his one-way flight to Saudi Arabia was set to take off, according to reports.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35 year-old Saudi national, said he helped advise Saudi Arabia authorities companies on technology and gushed in a latest podcast interview about assembly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, then the deputy crown prince, during the prince’s 2016 go to to Silicon Valley.
Alfozan said he had been wanting for steerage on whether to return to his homeland. In response, the prince suggested younger Saudis in Silicon Valley to hone their abilities at premier tech firms before bringing that experience home, Alfozan said in an Arabic podcast interview last month.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, a Saudi national, was arrested by the FBI three days before his deliberate one-way flight to Saudi Arabia. Instagram/alfozan
“You learn from the source and then, God willing, bring that experience and knowledge back to the homeland,” Alfozan said.
Alfozan – who had also labored at Meta and an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup – was listed as a enterprise companion at RAED Ventures in Riyadh alongside Prince Khalid bin Bader Al Saud, a member of the Saudi royal household.
The revelations from the podcast come this week as OpenAI found a “surreptitious audio recording device” stuffed into a USB port on the back of a TV in a convention room — wrapped in toilet paper in an attempt to conceal the machine, according to a grievance filed by federal prosecutors.
The alleged espionage highlights the cutthroat world race by governments to develop superior AI. OpenAI has been competing with other main AI labs including Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI along with quite a few Chinese firms and the US authorities has said developing the most elite AI instruments is a national security crucial.
“This arrest highlights our relentless efforts in partnership with the FBI to identify and prosecute those who seek to steal our technology,” said US Attorney for the Northern District of California Craig Missakian. “For us, it is a matter of national security.”
In a still image from surveillance video included in a charging doc, Alfozan, a Saudi national employed as an OpenAI engineer, appears behind a tv where a recording machine had been positioned. via REUTERS
William Pernik, a lawyer representing Alfozan, said his consumer was charged with violating a federal recording statute, “not stealing trade secrets or working as a foreign agent,” and requested for “everyone to withhold judgment until full facts become 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 an American technological sector that leads the world, a sector built in large part by immigrants like him.”
A photograph in the court doc reveals an oddly positioned object on the back of a TV in an OpenAI convention room. Another picture reveals the alleged machine with the branding of Seeed Studio, a company that seems to offer AI recording merchandise.
Meetings in that convention room apparently concerned high-level discussions of the company’s confidential plans, such as proprietary analysis, OpenAI’s technical capabilities, its authorities relationships and more.
A hidden audio recording machine put in in an OpenAI govt convention room by Alfozan, a Saudi national employed as an engineer at the AI company. via REUTERS
The Sam Altman-led company traced the machine to Alfozan. Footage confirmed Alfozan showing close to the convention room a number of instances, even though he had no authority to access the room or take part in those conferences, the Department of Justice said in its grievance.
Alfozan also used chatbots to plot the alleged recording efforts, asking about OpenAI’s building addresses, assembly room capacities and calendars, federal prosecutors allege.
He even requested data about the places of “leadership and exec,” per the grievance.
Another chatbot account related with his spouse allegedly included queries on methods to set up and disguise audio recording units.
OpenAI places of work in San Francisco, California. Gado via Getty Images
On Oct. 5, a picture allegedly captured Alfozan coming into the convention room to get a sneak peek at the recording machine. Around that same time, OpenAI security employees discovered a related recording machine in Alfozan’s unattended bag, the DOJ said.
OpenAI fired Alfozan earlier this week after having labored for the San Francisco-based AI company since July 2025. Alfozan studied laptop science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
