Who Is Abdulrahman Alfozan? What We Know About The Saudi Engineer Arrested For Allegedly Bugging OpenAI Office

Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, was arrested for allegedly installing a recording device in an executive conference room at OpenAI's San Francisco headquarters. Alfozan, who had worked at OpenAI since July 2025, is accused of possessing no authority to enter the room where the device was discovered. He made his first court appearance on Tuesday and remains in federal custody pending a detention hearing on October 19. Should he be convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.

According to the Justice Department, Alfozan was identified as an engineer at OpenAI and worked on the company's product team. His LinkedIn profile lists him as an engineering lead at OpenAI. OpenAI terminated his employment on the day of his arrest in coordination with federal investigators to avoid interfering with the case.

Before joining OpenAI, Alfozan served as a senior systems engineer at Meta and as a founding engineer at Nash, an AI logistics infrastructure company. He studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of California, Berkeley. Prosecutors allege that Alfozan sought information about OpenAI's building layout, meeting rooms, and executive locations using an AI productivity tool.

A chatbot account associated with his spouse reportedly provided prompts about building a recorder. Alfozan allegedly used this AI productivity agent for approximately a month until September 16.

CCTV footage captured Alfozan near a television where the recording device was planted. OpenAI maintains that they have no evidence suggesting Alfozan improperly accessed model weights, source code, or customer data.