Cognition Hires Chris Degnan as CRO After Factory AI Firing for Alleged Leaks

A former executive who helped scale Snowflake's annual recurring revenue to $3B has joined the AI startup Cognition to lead its global sales and expansion. The hire follows a public dispute with rival Factory AI, which terminated Chris Degnan's roles as a board observer and advisor for allegedly sharing confidential data with the competitor. Factory's CEO, Matan, alleges that Cognition's engineers used fake interviews to obtain proprietary product information and targeted insiders with knowledge of the firm's most secret plans.

Cognition CEO Scott Wu denied the claims, stating that Degnan never disclosed Factory's information and that the firm does not gather competitor data through covert means. The冲突 arises as Factory claims its own rapid scaling, with a team growth of 10x and a 100x increase in year over year revenue. Degnan will be supported by Chad Peets and the RPT team in building Cognition's go-to-market organization for its AI coding agent, Devin.