Factory AI Signals New Era with Strategic Hires from NEA

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – May 26, 2026 – In a move that underscores a significant trend in the artificial intelligence sector, enterprise AI firm Factory has announced that Madison Faulkner, a Partner at venture capital giant New Enterprise Associates (NEA), is joining the company as its new Head of Strategy. Simultaneously, Lila Tretikov, a celebrated AI veteran and NEA's Partner and Head of AI Strategy, will assume Faulkner's vacated seat on Factory’s board of directors.

The dual appointments are more than just a C-suite shuffle for the rapidly ascending startup, which creates AI-powered coding agents. They represent a powerful statement about the convergence of top-tier investment conviction and hands-on operational leadership, signaling a new phase of maturity for the AI industry where deep technical expertise is becoming the most valuable currency on both sides of the table. Factory, which only last month closed a $150 million Series C round at a staggering $1.5 billion valuation, is now armed with two of the sharpest minds in AI to guide its next chapter.

The Great Talent Migration: From Investor to Operator

Madison Faulkner’s transition from a partner at one of the world's most influential venture firms to an operational role is a clear embodiment of what some are calling the "great AI talent migration." It’s a trend where investors with deep technical backgrounds choose to leave the world of term sheets and board decks to get their hands dirty building the very technologies they once funded.

Faulkner is no stranger to the trenches of AI development. With a background as an engineer at Meta and later as Head of Data Science and AI at Thrasio, she possesses the applied machine learning expertise that separates theorists from practitioners. Her move to NEA in 2024 put her in a position to identify and back the most promising AI infrastructure companies. It was in this capacity that she began working with Factory, leading NEA's investment in the company's $50 million Series B and joining its board.

Her decision to now join the company full-time speaks volumes about her belief in Factory's mission. “For more than two years together at NEA, Lila and I were deeply focused on where AI infrastructure was going and where the gaps were,” Faulkner said in a statement. “Factory was the clearest answer I found to a problem I've seen since my engineering days: developers buried in maintenance work they didn't create and couldn’t escape. That conviction compelled me to join Factory – backing them was never going to be enough, I wanted to help build it and be a part of its magic.”

This sentiment was echoed by Factory's co-founder and CEO, Matan Grinberg. “Madison believed in what we were building so deeply that joining the team full-time was the only logical next step,” he commented. Her move is the ultimate expression of an investor's conviction, a bet made not just with capital, but with her own career.

A Board Strengthened by AI Royalty

Replacing Faulkner on the board is Lila Tretikov, a figure whose resume reads like a history of modern technology leadership. As NEA's Partner and Head of AI Strategy, Tretikov brings a level of experience that few can match. Her appointment ensures that Factory not only retains a powerful connection to NEA but gains a strategic advisor who has operated at the highest echelons of the tech world.

Tretikov's career includes a transformative tenure as CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind Wikipedia, where she is credited with introducing an AI strategy and reversing a decline in its user base. More recently, she served as Corporate Vice President and Deputy Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft, a role in which she helped drive AI transformation across the entire software giant. Her work has earned her a spot on Forbes' list of the world's 100 most powerful women.

“The best thing about Madison and Lila is that neither of them needs the problem explained,” Grinberg noted, highlighting their shared background in building and leading engineering teams. “Having Lila step into that board seat means we're gaining someone who has operated at a scale companies like ours aspire to.”

Tretikov sees her new role as a natural continuation of her work with Faulkner at NEA. “Madison and I have been thinking about this space together at NEA for two years,” Tretikov stated. “She's going to go build the thing we kept talking about, and I get to be part of that journey as a board member.”

Beyond Assistants: The Rise of the 'Agentic Developer Stack'

The intense conviction from figures like Faulkner and Tretikov is centered on Factory's pioneering work in what is known as the "agentic developer stack." This concept represents a fundamental leap beyond the current generation of AI coding assistants, such as GitHub Copilot or Amazon CodeWhisperer, which primarily offer code suggestions and autocompletions.

Factory's products, called "Droids," are designed as autonomous AI agents. They are engineered to handle complete, complex tasks across the entire software development lifecycle without constant human supervision. This includes time-consuming and often tedious work like large-scale code migrations, complex refactors, automated testing, documentation, and even incident response.

This shifts the role of the human engineer from a hands-on coder to an orchestrator who defines high-level goals and delegates entire "missions" to their AI counterparts. According to industry analysts, this is the future of software development, with a 2025 Gartner report projecting that over 75% of enterprise software engineers will use AI coding assistants by 2028. Factory is betting that enterprises will quickly move beyond simple assistants to full-fledged agents.

A key differentiator for Factory is its model-agnostic platform, which can leverage different foundational AI models like Anthropic's Claude or DeepSeek. This gives enterprise customers the flexibility to choose the best model for a given task based on performance, cost, and compliance needs, avoiding vendor lock-in and ensuring their AI infrastructure is future-proof.

Fueling the Rocket: A $1.5 Billion Valuation and Enterprise Trust

Factory's ambitious vision is backed by equally impressive financial momentum and a roster of blue-chip clients. The company, founded in 2023 by Matan Grinberg and Eno Reyes, achieved "unicorn" status in under three years. Its recent $150 million Series C was led by Khosla Ventures and saw continued participation from NEA and other major investors like Sequoia Capital, Blackstone, and Nvidia.

This massive infusion of capital was fueled by a reported explosion in growth, with the company claiming to have doubled its revenue month-over-month for the past six months. This rapid adoption is a testament to the tangible value its Droids are providing. The company's client list includes some of the biggest names in finance, technology, and professional services, such as Morgan Stanley, Revolut, Palo Alto Networks, Adobe, and EY.

These organizations are deploying Factory's Droids to automate engineering work at scale, reportedly saving hundreds of thousands of engineering hours and millions of dollars in the process. For enterprises grappling with sprawling legacy codebases and a perpetual shortage of top engineering talent, the promise of autonomous agents that can reliably handle maintenance and modernization is incredibly compelling. With the addition of Faulkner's strategic guidance and Tretikov's board-level oversight, Factory appears poised to not just ride the wave of agentic AI, but to define its direction for years to come.