A board adviser changed sides on Wednesday, and the two men involved now disagree about nearly every fact, starting with whether anyone was fired.
Matan Grinberg, co-founder and CEO of Factory, which builds AI agents that write software with little human help, posted on X that he had dismissed Chris Degnan as a board adviser. His allegation: Degnan passed confidential information to Cognition, which builds the Devin coding agent and which Grinberg calls his biggest competitor. About two hours later, Degnan announced on X and LinkedIn that he had become Cognition’s chief revenue officer, according to TechCrunch, which reported the dispute on 30 September.
Degnan’s résumé explains why the move landed hard. He joined Snowflake as its very first salesperson, then ran its revenue organization as chief revenue officer for 11 years. He is currently a partner at RPT Partners, an investor in Factory, a post he took up five months ago. Since October of last year he has also advised startups on go-to-market strategy at the venture firm Iconiq.
Grinberg’s account runs like this. Degnan earlier admitted a “casual” conversation with a Cognition executive, then assured Grinberg he had no interest in working there, saying he had “made too much money” and was “too lazy” for it. Grinberg says he believed him. On Monday, Degnan apparently revealed that talks with Cognition had been ongoing. Grinberg says he then fired him on Tuesday, adding that Degnan was bound by confidentiality obligations and that “we do not know the extent of the information he shared.”
Degnan rejects that account. In a post on X, he said he was not terminated: he resigned on Monday and told Grinberg he was going to Cognition, whereupon Grinberg proposed that he join Factory as a staff member instead, an offer he turned down. He also says his last Factory board meeting came weeks before he had “ever spoken” to Cognition, and that he has not shared confidential information.
Then the investors piled in. Khosla Ventures backs both companies. Its founder, Vinod Khosla, accused Grinberg on X of lying about the firing and called Factory a “struggling second tier competitor.” Keith Rabois, a Khosla Ventures partner, took Factory’s side, writing that it is “unethical per se to even interview at a competitor while attending Board meetings and Board dinners.” Cognition CEO Scott Wu said his company has “no interest in Factory’s info,” and argued that Degnan resigned on Monday. TechCrunch notes that Wu did not dispute that Degnan had been in talks with Cognition before then.
Grinberg told Khosla he holds email receipts supporting his version but did not post them. Degnan, RPT’s managing partner Chad Peets, Factory and Khosla Ventures had not responded to TechCrunch’s requests for further comment when it published. Nothing in the reporting shows what, if anything, was actually shared, so the central charge remains an allegation from one side that the other flatly denies.
The money around the quarrel is large. Factory closed a $200 million round this month that values it at $5 billion. Cognition, in the same month, took in $2 billion and was valued at $48 billion, nearly ten times Factory’s price. The smaller company is making its case in public against a rival with far deeper pockets.
The episode also lands on a live legal question. TechCrunch reports that Andreessen Horowitz is the subject of a Justice Department probe into its partners sitting on competing companies’ boards. Venture firms already back direct rivals, including both OpenAI and Anthropic, so the old taboo against overlapping stakes has weakened. A founder willing to name a board member in public suggests the remaining line is about who sees the roadmap, not who holds the shares.
Startups in crowded categories should expect investors and advisers to ask harder questions about exits, and boards to write tighter confidentiality and conflict terms, before the next adviser takes a call from a competitor.
Reported by TechCrunch on 30 September 2026.
