Factory CEO just accused his VC board adviser of spying for Cognition
- ID
- 30512
- Status
- summarized
- Published
- 01 Oct 2026, 4:39 AM
- Fetched
- 01 Oct 2026, 8:40 AM
- Provider
- TechCrunch
- Category
- technology
- Original URL
- https://techcrunch.com/2026/09/30/factory-ceo-just-accused-his-vc-board-advisor-of-spying-for-cognition/
- Source URL
- https://techcrunch.com/feed/
Summary
- Score
- 5.0
- Created
- 01 Oct 2026, 8:41 AM
- Tags
- Audience
- saas_foundersdevelopers
What happened
Factory CEO Matan Grinberg posted on X on Sept 30 that he fired VC Chris Degnan as a board advisor, alleging Degnan shared confidential information with Cognition, which Grinberg calls Factory's biggest competitor. Two hours later Degnan announced on X and LinkedIn that he had joined Cognition as chief revenue officer, denied the allegations, and said he resigned rather than was fired. Degnan, Snowflake's first sales hire and its CRO for 11 years, had spent the last five months as a partner at Newport Beach-based RPT Partners, an investor in Factory, and also advises startups on go-to-market for Iconiq.
Why it matters
Factory raised $200M at a $5B valuation this month with customers including Nvidia, Adobe and T-Mobile, while Cognition (maker of Devin) raised $2B at a $48B valuation with customers including Goldman Sachs and Citi — so this is a governance fight between two funded agentic-coding rivals, not a product change. If you take board advisors or GTM advisors from funds that also back competitors, this is a concrete case for writing confidentiality and conflict-of-interest terms into advisor agreements and controlling what roadmap and pipeline data such advisors can see. Nothing here changes code you ship or a tool you use today.
Discussion angle
What information do you actually let a board advisor or investor-partner see when they also work with a competitor — and what does an advisor agreement need to say about it before the fight happens?