Grinberg said Degnan had earlier acknowledged a "casual" conversation with a Cognition executive but assured him he had no interest in working for the rival, saying he had "made too much money" and was "too lazy to go work for Cognition." On Monday, however, Degnan reportedly disclosed that his talks with Cognition had been ongoing.
"For weeks, while he sat in our board meetings and advised our leadership team, he was also confiding with executives of our largest competitor," Grinberg wrote. "Chris was subject to confidentiality obligations in connection with his work with Factory. We do not know the extent of the information he shared, but it puts his timely questions about our product roadmap and what the parity gap involves into a new light."
Degnan was Snowflake's first sales hire and spent 11 years as that company's chief revenue officer. For the past five months he was a partner at RPT Partners, a Newport Beach, California investor in Factory, and he also serves as a go-to-market adviser to startups for the venture firm Iconiq, a role dating back to October of last year.
Degnan's post announcing his move did not mention Factory, but did state that RPT Ventures and its managing partner, Chad Peets, will now work with Cognition. "I am thrilled that Chad and the RPT team will be working closely with me in our pursuit of building a generational company," Degnan wrote.
Factory, a three-year-old San Francisco company whose AI agents can carry out programming tasks largely on their own, raised $200 million this month at a $5 billion valuation from investors including Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Insight Partners. Its customers include Nvidia, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada, Palo Alto Networks, Adobe and T-Mobile. Cognition, maker of the Devin coding agent, raised $2 billion at a $48 billion valuation earlier this month, and counts Mercedes-Benz, NASA, Goldman Sachs and Citi as customers.