The fast-rising insurance tech startup Corgi spent this past week fending off an accusation no founder wants on their timeline: that it lifted an open source product and slapped its own brand on top. The company flatly denies it. “No code was used from Papermark,” Corgi told TechCrunch.
Here’s how the row erupted. Papermark, which makes open source data room software, watched Corgi roll out a new product literally called Dataroom. Deal room software is, at its core, secure document sharing — the kind of tool startups use to pitch VCs and hand over due-diligence materials. Papermark co-founder Marc Seitz took to X with screenshots showing Corgi’s product using the same wording for the same features, word for word, and called it copyright-infringing “fraud.”
Corgi co-founder and CEO Nico Laqua promised to investigate, then came back swinging. He argued the actual code differed between the two products and drew a sharp distinction: “copying my style” is not the same claim as “stealing enterprise code.” Still, he conceded ground.
“Looking back, we should’ve leaned more into our own language and visual choices instead of taking cues from existing products in the space, and that’s on us,” he posted.
The culprit, according to Corgi, was vibe-coding — letting an AI assistant generate the interface from loose prompts. A spokesperson said the offending material was “isolated to visual elements on two peripheral settings pages,” already “immediately updated.”
That defense raises a genuinely thorny question for the AI era. If a bot can replicate the look, feel and every function of someone else’s work without copying the underlying source line for line, where does imitation end and theft begin? Legally, identical code is what counts — which is why this differs from the PearAI case, where a YC alum openly cloned an open source project. Morally, it’s murkier, and it’s going to keep happening.
OpenProse founder Dan Barrett put it bluntly on X: “In a world where a bot can trivially copy 1:1 the structure of something even if the character-level code diverges … what makes one unacceptable and the other not?”
Corgi’s response has leaned on its lawyers. It issued a cease-and-desist to Seitz demanding the tweet come down, and the founder of Hello World Cafe says he received one too over a joke about the controversy. It isn’t the first time: rival Matcha accused Corgi of bullying back in May, and the startup has sued former employees, building a reputation for being litigious.
For context, Corgi is a full-stack insurance carrier founded in 2024 by Nico Laqua and Emily Yuan. It underwrites and issues policies directly across lines including D&O, E&O, cyber, commercial general liability, hired and non-owned auto, fiduciary and AI liability. Since gaining full regulatory approval in July 2025, the company has reported annual recurring revenue exceeding $40 million.
Laqua also went viral for telling Harry Stebbings’ podcast that he expects staff to work seven days a week — a stance that decades of productivity research roundly contradicts. The startup’s fundraising has been just as eye-catching: a $106 million Series B1 valuing it at $2.6 billion landed only three weeks after a $160 million Series B at $1.3 billion, itself four months after a $108 million Series A. Oh, and Corgi runs a 24-hour coffee shop too.
