Factory’s Board Adviser Walks Straight Into Cognition

Factory chief Matan Grinberg said on September 30 that he had fired board observer Chris Degnan over talks with rival Cognition. Degnan posted 52 minutes later that he is Cognition’s new chief revenue officer and that he had already quit.

The argument over who ended the relationship leaves a simpler transfer. Factory, the $5 billion coding-agent startup, just watched a board-level sales adviser, and the go-to-market firm around him, take a job at the $48 billion company he was hired to help beat.

The Same Morning Degnan Became Cognition’s CRO

Grinberg, co-founder and chief executive of Factory, wrote on X that he had “immediately terminate[d] Christopher Degnan’s roles as a Board Observer and Advisor to Factory” the day before, after more than a year of service. He said Degnan had first described a “casual” talk with a Cognition executive, then on Monday, September 28, admitted the contact was “formal and recurring.”

Grinberg’s post went up at 16:33 UTC on September 30.

We are terminating Chris Degnan for unethical conduct involving Cognition.

The last few months have seen incredible progress in AI capabilities. San Francisco has flourished as new companies that solve new, more ambitious problems are finding great success. Generally, it is a…

— Matan Grinberg (@matanSF) September 30, 2026

Degnan’s own announcement landed at 17:25 UTC. He said he was “super excited to join Cognition as its Chief Revenue Officer,” named Cognition chief executive Scott Wu and president Russell Kaplan, and added that Chad Peets and the RPT Partners team “will be working closely with me.” Cognition’s account posted a welcome three minutes later and said it was also excited to partner with Peets and RPT on its sales team.

I’m super excited to join Cognition as its Chief Revenue Officer.

Going from the 1st sales rep at Snowflake to CRO at a $100b public company was the thrill of a lifetime.   Never in my wildest imagination did I think I'd get the opportunity to jump on another rocket ship.…

— Chris Degnan (@cwdegnan) September 30, 2026

Degnan was Snowflake’s first sales hire, employee No. 13, and spent 11 years as that company’s chief revenue officer. RPT Partners, the Newport Beach firm where he is a partner, says he scaled Snowflake from pre-revenue to over $3 billion in annual recurring revenue. He also advises founders through ICONIQ Growth. That is the hire Cognition bought. The spy language is the fight Factory chose to pick around it.

Fired on Tuesday or Resigned on Monday

The two men agree on the destination and on the Monday call. They do not agree on the ending, on which meetings Degnan sat through, or on whether any Factory material moved.

THE WEEK THE ADVISER SWITCHED

1. September 28, 2026: Degnan says he resigned that Monday and told Grinberg he was going to Cognition. Grinberg says Degnan spent that day advising Factory on confidential board-level matters, then called that evening to say his Cognition contact had been formal and recurring.
2. September 29, 2026: Grinberg says he decided that Tuesday to terminate Degnan as board observer and adviser.
3. September 30, 2026: Grinberg posts the accusation at 16:33 UTC. Degnan posts the CRO job at 17:25 UTC, then at 18:36 UTC answers point by point.

Grinberg wrote that Degnan had been “subject to confidentiality obligations,” that Factory does not know how much was shared, and that Degnan’s “timely questions about our product roadmap and what the parity gap involves” now look different. He also said Cognition engineers had “feigned interviews” to pry at the product, a separate charge Wu later rejected.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The job: Degnan is Cognition’s chief revenue officer as of September 30, and RPT is going with him.
• The Monday call: Both men say Degnan told Grinberg that day that he was taking the Cognition role.
• The denial: Degnan says Cognition never asked about Factory, and that he would not have given the information.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• Who ended it: Grinberg says a Tuesday firing. Degnan says a Monday resignation, after which Grinberg offered him a full-time Factory job that he refused.
• Which meetings: Grinberg describes weeks of board sessions during the talks. Degnan says the last board meeting he attended was weeks before he had ever spoken to Cognition.
• What moved: No emails, minutes, or messages have been posted. Grinberg says he has receipts and has not shared them.

Degnan put his version in a numbered reply the same afternoon.

You did not terminate me. I resigned from my advisor position on Monday and told you I was going to Cognition. In response, you asked me to consider a full time role at Factory. I told you I wasn’t interested.

Chris Degnan, incoming chief revenue officer, Cognition, on X

He also wrote that he had resigned from my advisor position on Monday, that Cognition “has never asked about information on Factory, nor would I ever give it,” and that the last board meeting he attended predates any Cognition conversation. Wu wrote that Cognition has “no interest in Factory’s info.” The public file still stops at those sentences.

RPT Partners Goes With Him

The personnel move is larger than one adviser. Degnan’s CRO post is also an RPT post. He called Peets his “co-pilot” from the Snowflake sales build and his business partner at RPT, and said there is “no world where I could be the best version of myself without Chad.” Cognition’s welcome repeated the Peets and RPT pairing.

RPT’s own site still lists Factory as an advisor and investor among the companies it has built, funded, or advised, in a roster that also names Snowflake, Harvey, and xAI. Peets is described there as an early investor in Factory.ai. The page had not been rewritten to match the Cognition job when the posts landed.

WHAT RPT SAYS IT SELLS

• The Snowflake machine: Peets, a former Sutter Hill Ventures managing director, helped Degnan recruit more than 500 people onto Snowflake’s revenue team.
• The hiring scale: The firm says it has placed 7,500-plus software sales executives and more than 100 chiefs of revenue.
• The board product: It sells go-to-market advice, board observation, and sales-team building to B2B software companies, the same access Grinberg now says was abused.

That is why the walk-over bites. Factory did not only lose a famous closer. It lost, in public, the boutique that had been in the room to build its sales org, while that boutique’s partner took the same brief at the larger rival.

$48 Billion Versus $5 Billion

The two companies closed outsized rounds in the same September window. Factory raised $200 million at a $5 billion valuation on September 15, more than tripling the $1.5 billion mark from a $150 million round in April, and said total funding is now over $400 million. Backers named on that post include Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Evantic Capital, Sound Ventures, NEA, Mantis VC, and Clearlake. Co-founders Grinberg and Eno Reyes said the money goes to research, product, and global go-to-market. Named customers on the same page are Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada, Palo Alto Networks, Adobe, and T-Mobile.

Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, raised over $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation on September 8. Andreessen Horowitz and Accel led as new investors, with Founders Fund, General Catalyst, and Avenir among the returning names. The company said run-rate revenue had grown from $492 million at its May round to almost $900 million, and listed NVIDIA, GE Aerospace, Citi, Mercedes-Benz, and Modal as Devin customers. It started in 2024. Factory was founded in 2023.

THE TWO SEPTEMBER MARKS

Grinberg used his September 30 post to claim Factory’s team has “10x’d in size” and its revenue has “100x’d year over year,” and to argue that Cognition has “fallen behind us on the capabilities that matter most to customers: cost, quality, and security.” Factory’s raise post leans on a model-agnostic “software factory,” air-gapped installs, and a router it says cuts token spend by more than 60 percent. Cognition’s post leans on Devin taking first passes at incidents and security work without a new chat. Degnan is the first major GTM name to pick a side with his feet.

Khosla’s Own Partners Split in Public

Khosla Ventures put money into Factory’s September 15 round. The same firm’s public portfolio lists Cognition among its enterprise holdings, under the line “Makers of Devin, the first AI software engineer.” Vinod Khosla, the firm’s founder, did not treat that overlap as a reason to stay quiet.

You are a struggling second tier competitor that is more unethical and lying just because you have no decency or sense of proper behavior and shows your desperation. Straight out lying about if Chris being fired I thought would be below even you.

Vinod Khosla, founder, Khosla Ventures, on X

Grinberg replied that he has email receipts and did not post them. Keith Rabois, a Khosla Ventures partner, took the other side of his own firm’s ledger. He wrote that it is “unethical per se to even interview at a competitor while attending Board meetings and Board dinners,” and that sitting for an interview with board-level information “without resigning is absolutely insane.”

The split is the dual holding made audible. One partner is protecting a GTM hire into the $48 billion company. Another is defending the rule that a person with board access does not shop a rival while the dinners are still on the calendar. Factory, 15 days after printing Khosla on a $5 billion raise, got called second-tier by the name on the door.

What a Board Observer Is Allowed to Hear

A board observer is not a director. Degnan did not vote Factory’s stock. He still sat where product roadmaps, competitive “parity” gaps, and leadership questions get asked in plain language. Grinberg’s complaint is that those questions kept coming while Degnan was already in a formal loop with Cognition. Degnan’s reply is that the last board meeting was already in the past when those talks began, and that Monday’s work did not include a board session.

That factual fork is the whole case, and it is not auditable from outside. If Degnan’s calendar is right, Factory is converting a messy resignation into a public ethics charge. If Grinberg’s Monday memo is right, a man under confidentiality duties spent the day on board-level matters and disclosed a recurring rival relationship that night. Either way, the design is the same: a famous operator held a privileged seat at a $5 billion company while the $48 billion company was recruiting him to run sales.

Federal antitrust law is aimed at a different fact pattern. Section 8 of the Clayton Act can bar a person from serving two competing boards at the same time, with size cutoffs and small-overlap exceptions. Degnan was not a Factory director, and he is not claiming he stayed in the Factory seat after the Cognition job. The statute does not referee an adviser who interviews, resigns, and walks. Confidentiality contracts and whatever emails Grinberg is holding do that, if anyone files.

Confidentiality Lives on Trust and Little Else

Grinberg closed his post by calling trust in board membership “one of the sacred bonds in the Silicon Valley” and saying that bond “was violated.” Degnan closed his by saying he would never give Factory’s information away. Wu closed his by saying Cognition did not want it. None of those lines can be checked against a document the public has seen.

What can be checked is the org chart that exists this week. Degnan is paid to sell Devin. Peets and RPT are invited into that build. Khosla Ventures still sits on both cap tables, and its founder has already ranked the smaller company in public. Factory’s site still sells a global go-to-market push funded 15 days earlier. The observer seat is empty. The CRO seat at Cognition is not.