FBI Says OpenAI Suspect Held Saudi Government Folder
The court record describes a well-paid employee with one-way tickets to Riyadh and alleged ties to Saudi officials, but no public evidence yet shows he actually ran listening operations for the government.
Reporting from 1 source: GIGAZINE.
Abdulrahman Alfozan, an OpenAI employee since July 2025, is accused of planting a recording device around September 28 in a USB port behind a television in an executive meeting room. The FBI says he had accessed a folder called "Saudi Gov Docs," which also held photos of a second device, and that messages urged him to support Saudi Arabia. Prosecutors won an extension of his detention.
Alfozan moved to the United States in 2009 and studied at MIT and UC Berkeley. At OpenAI he lived in California with his wife and young son. When hired, he was offered a $325,000 annual salary and $2.2 million in stock compensation.
The FBI says messages urging him to support Saudi Arabia had been sent to him, and that he planned to use two months of paid leave to move his family to Riyadh. He had one-way tickets for the whole family and was arrested days before boarding. His wife and son moved up their departure and have already left the United States.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.