Former OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan pleaded "not guilty" to bugging an executive conference room at the company.

His lawyer entered the plea Friday, after a grand jury indicted him on a felony count of intercepting oral communications.

He has been jailed since his Oct. 9 arrest after a judge agreed his Saudi ties made him a flight risk.

No charge alleges trade-secret theft or work for a foreign government, and the company reports no sign he took model weights or source code.

So far, the record shows an alleged attempt to overhear an AI lab’s leadership, not what the encrypted recorder caught or for whom.