Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla has intervened in a public dispute between Cognition and Factory, two Silicon Valley artificial intelligence companies in which he has invested. Khosla called one company a struggling second-tier competitor and accused its CEO of lying, directing his criticism at Grinberg. Grinberg alleges that Cognition, the maker of the Devin autonomous AI software engineer, sent engineers to conduct fake job interviews at Factory to obtain product information. He also said Cognition sought employees with knowledge of Factory's confidential plans and claimed Degnan had spent weeks confiding with executives at Factory's largest competitor. Cognition, founded in late 2023, reached a $48 billion valuation in September after launching Devin in 2024. Factory, founded in 2023, reached a $5 billion valuation in its latest funding round last month. Both companies are competing to develop fully autonomous software development tools.