# Catherine Jue

> Catherine Jue is the San Francisco co-founder and CEO of Kernel, a developer infrastructure company that gives AI agents fast, isolated cloud browsers for working across the web. Her route to browser infrastructure runs through a first Y Combinator startup, engineering and product work at Nova Credit, leadership at Cash App, a Japanese tea company, and a world championship in Taekwon-Do. Kernel joined Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch and announced $22 million in Seed and Series A funding led by Accel in October 2025.

- **Role:** Co-Founder and CEO at Kernel
- **Organizations:** Kernel, Cash App, Block, Tekuno, Nova Credit, Sway Finance, Y Combinator, Gold House Founder Network
- **Education:** Linguistics and Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles, Summer 2016 batch, Sway Finance, Y Combinator, Summer 2025 batch, Kernel, Y Combinator
- **Known for:** Co-founded Kernel and raised $22 million in Seed and Series A funding led by Accel., Built Kernel from two co-founders to a team of 20 within roughly 16 months., Helped launch open-source browser infrastructure that put Chrome on a unikernel and reached the front page of Hacker News.

## Career timeline

- **2014** — Won gold in patterns at the ITF World Taekwon-Do Championships in Rome.
- **2016** — Co-founded Sway Finance, an automated bookkeeping product for SaaS companies, and joined Y Combinator's Summer 2016 batch.
- **After 2016** — Worked across engineering and product roles at Nova Credit after Sway Finance.
- **2019** — Founded Tekuno, a San Francisco company sourcing Japanese teas and tea objects from small-scale producers.
- **Before 2025** — Worked at Cash App, ultimately as an engineering manager, and led a team that built an early ChatGPT-based internal project at Block.
- **2025-02** — Left Cash App to start a new company.
- **2025-05** — Publicly introduced Kernel with co-founder Rafael Garcia as browser infrastructure for web automations and AI agents.
- **2025** — Kernel joined Y Combinator's Summer 2025 batch.
- **2025-10** — Kernel announced $22 million in Seed and Series A funding led by Accel.
- **2026-07** — Reported that Kernel had grown to 20 people and powered tens of millions of browser launches during 2026.

## Achievements

- Co-founded Kernel and raised $22 million in Seed and Series A funding led by Accel.
- Built Kernel from two co-founders to a team of 20 within roughly 16 months.
- Helped launch open-source browser infrastructure that put Chrome on a unikernel and reached the front page of Hacker News.
- Co-founded Sway Finance and participated in Y Combinator's Summer 2016 batch.
- Led a team at Cash App that built an early ChatGPT-based internal knowledge project at Block.
- Founded Japanese tea company Tekuno in 2019.
- Won gold in patterns at the 2014 ITF World Taekwon-Do Championships and lists two earlier junior world championships on her LinkedIn profile.
- Won grand prizes at the 2015 Money20/20 Hackathon and AT&T NYU Connect Ability Challenge, according to her LinkedIn profile.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Published 'Building for the Internet's trillionth user,' arguing for an open web where legitimate, user-delegated agents are recognizable and auditable; she reported a 20-person Kernel team and tens of millions of browser launches in 2026.
- **2026-03** — Kernel introduced a research preview of GPU-accelerated cloud browsers for graphics-heavy and WebGL-based agent workloads.
- **2026-02** — Kernel described work with Anthropic evaluating Sonnet 4.6 on 254 real-world login pages; Catherine also appeared on The Infra Pod and the Open Source Startup Podcast.
- **2025-10** — Kernel announced $22 million in Seed and Series A funding led by Accel, with participation from Y Combinator, Cintrifuse Capital, Vercel Ventures, Refinery Ventures and SV Angel.
- **2025-05** — Catherine and Rafael Garcia publicly launched Kernel as high-performance browser infrastructure for web automations and AI agents.

## Links

- Website: https://www.catherinejue.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juecd
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/juecd__
- GitHub: https://github.com/juecd

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/catherine-jue
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-18