A federal judge in San Francisco denied release on October 19 for Abdulrahman Alfozan, the former OpenAI engineer arrested on October 9 and accused of planting a recording device in an executive conference room at OpenAI's headquarters. Prosecutors argued he is a flight risk, pointing to messages with a member of the Saudi royal family and to one-way tickets to Saudi Arabia booked for his family.

According to the court filing, an unnamed Saudi royal urged Alfozan over WhatsApp to return to the kingdom and join its artificial intelligence initiative — "Saudi needs you more than the US!" — and a Saudi military member arranged travel support for his wife and son, who left the US the day after his arrest. Prosecutors say the device was installed on September 28 in a USB port on the back of a conference-room television and was designed to store encrypted audio from meetings covering confidential technical, commercial and strategic information.

Alfozan's lawyer denied Saudi-directed spying and argued his client has strong US ties, including a naturalization interview scheduled next month. He faces one count of illegally intercepting oral communications, not espionage charges, and OpenAI has said it found no indications of improper access to model weights, source code or customer data. His next hearing is November 6.