SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI said Tuesday that it had discovered a hidden recording device in one of its offices and traced it to an employee, and that the FBI had arrested the worker.

A team that searches for surveillance equipment found the device Sept. 30 during a sweep of a conference room, OpenAI said. The device was built to evade detection, used advanced encryption, could monitor audio and had a way to transfer data without being noticed, the company said.

The employee planned to place more recording devices in sensitive areas of the artificial intelligence company’s offices to secretly record meetings, it added. OpenAI said it had used its most advanced AI models to help investigators analyze copies of the device’s stored data and track changes to it.

The Department of Justice identified the employee as a Saudi Arabian national, Abdulrahman Alfozan, 35. Alfozan, who joined OpenAI’s product team in July 2025 as an engineer, was fired Friday, the day he was arrested, the company said. The device was inserted into a USB port on the back of a television in one of OpenAI’s buildings in San Francisco, according to the Justice Department.

“At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code or customer data,” OpenAI said in a statement.

A lawyer for Alfozan, William Pernik, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The incident adds to long-standing concerns about the security of leading AI labs, which create cutting-edge models and conduct research that are among the most closely guarded assets in the tech industry. The rapid pace of AI advancement has thrust many AI companies into a debate over the safety of the technology, with some AI leaders saying foundational models are progressing too quickly and can be dangerous, especially in the wrong hands.

Jay Clayton, director of national intelligence, said in a statement that OpenAI’s “serious situation underscores why winning the global super intelligence race is a national security prerogative — and why President Trump’s leadership in creating the Super Intelligence Force is so important.”

FBI Director Kash Patel said protecting U.S. tech innovation was “essential to safeguarding our nation’s economic strength and national security.”

OpenAI has faced scrutiny over security before. In 2023, a hacker broke into the company’s messaging systems and stole details about the design of its AI technologies.

More recently, OpenAI’s advanced AI models have gone rogue, hacking into the AI startup Hugging Face and an Australian government website without the company’s knowledge. Some OpenAI employees had cautioned executives to take more care in testing the advanced models, The New York Times has reported.

In its statement Tuesday, OpenAI said that protecting its technology was “a matter of national importance,” and that its security program was built to guard against threats from insiders, cybercriminals and nation-states.

OpenAI said it had timed the firing of its employee with the FBI to avoid disrupting the investigation. It gradually limited the employee’s access to company systems and offices, then suspended his access, put him on leave and took his company equipment.

Alfozan appeared in federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, the Justice Department said, and is set to appear in federal court again Monday for a detention hearing.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Emmy Martin/Aaron Wojack
c. 2026 The New York Times Company