Abdulrahman Alfozan, the 35-year-old Saudi national charged this week with planting a secret recording device at OpenAI, has a second identity that prosecutors did not miss: he is a venture partner at a Saudi investment firm with ties to the royal family.
Alfozan, a U.S. permanent resident who joined OpenAI in July 2025, was arrested on October 9 and hit with federal charges on October 13. Prosecutors allege he installed a Seeed XIAO ESP32-S3 Sense recorder into a USB port on a television in OpenAI's executive conference room around September 28. Staff reportedly found the device wrapped in toilet paper on September 30, and the company said it used its own AI models to help identify the culprit. He faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for attempting to intercept oral communications.
The New York Times reports that Alfozan said in an Arabic podcast interview last month that he and other Saudi tech professionals in Silicon Valley had helped advise Saudi government agencies on technology. He is listed as a venture partner at Raed Ventures, a firm that also names Prince Khalid Bin Bader Al Saud as a partner.
OpenAI said it fired Alfozan and found no indication he accessed or exfiltrated model weights, source code, or customer data.