Jobs at Kernel

Recomputed daily from public data: capital freshness (0-35) + hiring velocity (0-30) + pay transparency (0-20) + employer rating (0-15; unrated scores the neutral 7), minus up to 10 for documented headwinds (lawsuits, layoffs, leadership churn). Transparent formula, not investment or career advice.

22Mtotal raised

Series A, $22M (combined seed + A), 2025last round

Earlystage

1-50team size

San FranciscoHQ

2025founded

~6headcount (as of 2026)

Founders: Catherine Jue (co-founder & CEO; co-founded Sway Finance (YC S16), led Cash App forward-deployed engineering) · Rafael Garcia (co-founder & CTO; co-founder/CTO of Clever (YC S12), exited for $500M in 2021)

Backed by: Accel, Y Combinator, SV Angel, Vercel Ventures, Cintrifuse Capital

Signals

Accel-led, YC-backed; unikernel architecture with sub-325ms cloud browser startup for AI agents.

In the news

The Linux kernel has 5 AI coding rules every vibe coder should use MakeUseOf · 2026-09-20

Linus Torvalds says AI has made 'huge' Linux kernel updates the new normal The Register · 2026-08-10

Forget the AI Slowdown—the Vulnerability Explosion Is Already Happening WIRED · 2026-09-19

Translating CUDA Tile Operations from Python to Rust Using Agentic AI | NVIDIA Technical Blog NVIDIA Developer · 2026-09-16

Auto-pulled from Google News, refreshed daily; headlines belong to their publishers

Culture read

Small team: high trust, high variance, nowhere to hide.

Indicative read from public signals, not insider info

Momentum index 52/100 = capital freshness (0-35) + hiring velocity (0-30) + comp transparency (0-20) + workplace rating (0-15), minus documented headwinds. Recomputed daily; not investment or career advice.