KERNEL
YC S25San Francisco, US · Founded 2025 · 6 employees · 2 known investors
Kernel provides infrastructure built on unikernels that enables AI agents to access and interact with the internet through web browsers, featuring fast startup times, stealth capabilities, session persistence, and comprehensive logging for developers.
AI & Machine LearningData & InfrastructureDeveloper ToolsEnterprise SoftwareCloud ComputingInfrastructureAIUnited States of AmericaAmerica / CanadaPartly Remote
Founders & leadership· Y Combinator alumni (S25)
KERNEL was founded in 2025 by Catherine Jue and Rafael Garcia.
CJ
Catherine Juein𝕏Co-Founder & CEOShe previously co-founded Sway Finance, which participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2016 batch.
RG
Rafael Garciain𝕏Co-FounderHe previously co-founded Clever, where he served as CTO before the company's exit.
Investors · 2
Founder mafia
4 people who came through KERNEL went on to found or lead other companies.
Competitors · 3
by search overlapVercel14 shared keywordsVercel is an infrastructure platform for building and deploying applications, with emerging support for agentic capabilities that allow AI agents and humans to collaborate in software development. The platform serves developers and agents building web applications and software.
Browserbase13 shared keywordsBrowserbase provides a browser automation platform that enables AI agents to interact with websites reliably, handling authentication, navigation, and complex actions to automate web-based workflows and data collection.
Standard Kernel Co.9 shared keywordsStandard Kernel develops AI infrastructure software that automatically generates high-performance kernels for hardware accelerators like GPUs and TPUs, addressing the bottleneck of kernel optimization in AI workloads.
Companies competing with KERNEL for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does KERNEL do?
- Kernel provides infrastructure built on unikernels that enables AI agents to access and interact with the internet through web browsers, featuring fast startup times, stealth capabilities, session persistence, and comprehensive logging for developers.
- Who founded KERNEL?
- KERNEL was founded by Catherine Jue, Rafael Garcia in 2025.
- Who are KERNEL's investors?
- KERNEL's investors include Jetstream, Y Combinator.
- Where is KERNEL headquartered?
- KERNEL is headquartered in San Francisco, US.


