Rob Waters turned down Google's six-figure job offer to build Kanawai AI

Why it matters

Waters traded a renewed Google salary and an estimated six figures in unvested stock for a company aimed at enterprise AI governance. Kanawai says he engineered secure AI solutions and infrastructure for highly regulated U.S. military environments, while co-founder Nicolle Cumberland is the founder described as having sold cybersecurity and AI solutions supporting Foreign Military Sales. The company has yet to attach public customer or revenue figures to its early onboarding claims.

In November 2025, Google laid off Rob Waters while he was flying to meet a customer. Within weeks, Google offered him a new six-figure role. Waters declined, giving up what he estimated was about six figures in unvested stock to work on Kanawai AI. He recounted the decision in a Business Insider interview published September 26th, 2026.

Waters had spent nearly six years at Google and led its data analytics and AI sales specialist team for Google Public Sector, according to Business Insider. Kanawai's current founder biography says he spent more than six years at Google engineering secure AI solutions and infrastructure for highly regulated environments across the U.S. military. That engineering experience is relevant to Kanawai's target market, though it does not establish that the product has solved the problem.

The layoff ended a job Waters had once dreamed of having. Google cut off his access without warning as he traveled to Los Angeles; he had to cancel the customer meeting from his personal email. The next morning, after roughly two hours of sleep, he learned that a new team was being formed and that he could apply when a position opened. Google offered him the role in early December.

Returning would have restored a salary and allowed his stock to keep vesting. Waters said he had long wanted to start a company, but the security of a corporate job had made leaving difficult. The layoff, he told Business Insider, made the choice feel like "now or never." He also described frustration with bureaucracy and the reorganization that eliminated his role.

From a layoff to an enterprise AI bet

Waters waited until his employment with Google ended before actively developing Kanawai, saying he wanted to avoid potential legal issues. A former Google colleague later left the company and began working with him on the idea. Waters traveled between Virginia and California during the first half of 2026, then moved to San Francisco on July 1st. His wife and son joined him in September.

He said he is living on savings and has not taken a salary. His Business Insider account says Kanawai was onboarding clients, working with larger technology vendors and beginning a pre-seed fundraising effort. The account did not attach customer or revenue figures to those claims. Kanawai's financing terms and investors were not identified in the reporting.

Kanawai currently describes its product as an enterprise AI system of record spanning shadow-AI discovery, AI FinOps, governance, EU AI Act compliance and sovereign AI, according to its platform description. That scope differs from the founders' earlier public description of an AI-native legal operating system intended to automate the case lifecycle. In an earlier LinkedIn post, CEO and co-founder Nicolle Ann Cumberland described Kanawai as a system for automating law firms' case workflows. The available accounts establish that both descriptions were used; they do not establish when or why the positioning changed.

Cumberland brings a different set of experience to the founding team. Kanawai says she is a former attorney and U.S. diplomat who later led Google Cloud sales work in cybersecurity and AI, including support for Foreign Military Sales. The founders' backgrounds span legal operations, enterprise sales and engineering secure AI systems for regulated military environments. Kanawai's product is aimed at organizations that need an inventory of AI use across teams, rather than a tool for a single legal workflow.

Kanawai's website advertises two no-cost, 30-day pilots: one focused on AI spending and another on governance and security. Those offers make the product's practical pitch more legible than the broad phrase "system of record": identify which tools are in use, who is using them, what they cost and which policies apply. Kanawai describes those capabilities; its public materials do not establish how the pilots convert into paid deployments.

The cost of choosing

Waters' decision puts a concrete price on the security he walked away from, though the equity figure remains his estimate. He said rejecting Google's offer meant forfeiting about six figures in unvested stock, alongside a six-figure salary. He did not give a more exact valuation. He and his family also moved across the country while he was drawing no salary from Kanawai.

That trade does not make Kanawai's outcome certain. Kanawai is entering a demanding enterprise market, where security and compliance claims need to hold up in customers' systems and budgets. Waters' Google experience does not establish that Kanawai has solved those problems. His account describes early customer onboarding, without naming deployments or reporting revenue.

Waters left a role leading a data analytics and AI sales specialist team for Google Public Sector, according to Business Insider. At Kanawai, he is building a product for organizations managing AI across their own operations. He gave up a salary and stock that would have kept vesting to pursue that bet, with his family joining him in San Francisco as Kanawai took shape.