AI Tech / news
Factory CEO accuses board adviser of leaking secrets to Cognition rival
Factory co-founder Matan Grinberg says he removed board adviser Chris Degnan over claims of sharing confidential information with competitor Cognition, hours before Degnan announced he had joined Cognition as chief revenue officer.
Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based agentic coding startup, said in a Wednesday post on X that he fired Degnan from his board adviser role. He alleged that Degnan passed confidential information to Cognition, which he described as Factory's biggest competitor.
Roughly two hours later, Degnan announced on X and LinkedIn that he had taken the chief revenue officer post at Cognition, the maker of the Devin coding agent. He disputed the account of his departure in a separate X post, saying he resigned after telling Grinberg he was taking the job rather than being dismissed.
Degnan's resume includes a stint as Snowflake's first sales hire and 11 years as the data company's chief revenue officer. For the past five months he has been a partner at RPT Partners, a Newport Beach, California-based investor in Factory, and since October of last year he has also served as a go-to-market adviser to startups at Iconiq.
Factory, founded three years ago, builds AI agents that can carry out programming tasks largely on their own. The company raised $200 million this month at a $5 billion valuation, with backing from Khosla Ventures, Blackstone, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners and others.
Its customer roster includes Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada, Palo Alto Networks, Adobe and T-Mobile. The dispute between the two men drew widespread discussion on X.