San Francisco, 30 September. A specialist team inspects a meeting room reserved for OpenAI's leadership, as it does regularly.
Behind the television, plugged into a USB port, it finds a small object the size of a thumb, wrapped in toilet paper. It is a microphone.
How the investigation unfolded
OpenAI immediately alerts the FBI. But rather than removing the device straight away, the company waits, and discreetly installs a camera.
According to the indictment, on 5 October, an engineer enters the room and appears to look behind the television, at the exact spot where the microphone was hidden. The camera films him. The same day, he leaves a bag unattended in another room. The security team finds his wallet, his identity papers, and a second recording device, similar to the first. Surveillance cameras had already spotted him several times near that room, where he had no reason to be.
On 9 October, he is arrested by the FBI and fired. The case was made public on Tuesday.
What we know about the accused
Federal prosecutors identify him as Abdulrahman Alfozan, a 35-year-old Saudi national, employed by OpenAI since July 2025. He is charged with using or attempting to use a device to intercept conversations. He appeared before a federal court on Tuesday. At this stage, he is presumed innocent.
According to OpenAI, the device was sophisticated: advanced encryption, audio listening capabilities, and a data transfer system designed to evade surveillance. The company also claims to have evidence showing he intended to install further devices.
Why?
That is the big unknown. According to the FBI director, the aim was to capture sensitive conversations about the company's "superintelligence" technology, borrowing along the way the vocabulary imposed by the September presidential executive order.
But nothing indicates, at this stage, on whose behalf he may have acted, or even whether he was acting for anyone other than himself. No country has been implicated by the authorities.
In 1945, Soviet schoolchildren give the United States ambassador in Moscow a magnificent wooden sculpture depicting the great seal of the United States. It would stay hanging in his residence for seven years. In 1952, the Americans discover that it contained a microphone of a completely new kind, with no battery and no wire, activated remotely by waves. It was nicknamed "The Thing". It is since this type of case that embassies have their rooms regularly inspected by specialist teams, exactly like the one that found the microphone at OpenAI.
What this says about AI
That an AI company has a team tasked with hunting for microphones, like an embassy, says a great deal. What is decided in those rooms, the plans for future models, strategic choices, partnerships, is worth billions today, and interests far more than just competitors.
Washington, moreover, increasingly treats AI as a national security matter. It is the head of American intelligence who now drives AI policy, as we reported with the creation of the Super Intelligence Force.
What to take away
AI labs once resembled universities, where work was shared. They increasingly resemble embassies, or military bases.
This case may be nothing more than the story of a lone man. But it shows that in the AI race, secrets have become valuable enough that people are willing to risk stealing them.