From 0 to 1. We incubate and invest in startups rewriting the financial OS.
We believe finance is overdue for reinvention. Despite advances in AI, much of the industry still runs on legacy infrastructure, manual workflows, and fragmented intelligence—slowed down by data silos, human bottlenecks, and outdated systems.
At Kernal, we're a venture studio building and backing AI-native companies to fix that. We create products in-house and fund early-stage founders rethinking financial infrastructure from first principles. Our mission is to rearchitect the financial stack—making it more autonomous, agile, and scalable from the ground up. The most defensible edge isn't capital—it's compounding intelligence.
We run a dual model:
Build — We launch ventures in-house when we see white space the market isn't filling fast enough.
Back — We incubate and invest in early-stage founders building in our core focus areas (Fintech, AI, Proptech, Insurtech). We believe great companies start as precise, powerful ideas and evolve into the operating layers of tomorrow's economy. Whether you're just getting started or scaling a full-fledged company, we work with companies from start to exit. If it's weird, hard, and disruptive, we're in.
Our past builds include:
Aurelius — the AI-powered financial terminal.
Hive — the AI-native deal room powered by agentic venture scouts that never sleep.
And just for fun:
Betcha — the social market for trading on peer predictions.
We love weird problems, underestimated builders, and ambitious ideas.
→ Pitch a company
→ Join something we're building
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We started out as Sandbox Incubator, a launchpad for ambitious student founders building real companies before they could vote.
In 2024, we funded 20+ startups with a combined valuation of $1.3+ million, connecting them to 10+ VCs including LvlUp Ventures, Acronym VC, Apus Ventures, Connetic Ventures, Cove Fund, Greycroft, Outlander VC, Santa Barbara Venture Partners, Spin Labs, M13, Capchase, Supercharger Ventures, ExpertDojo, and L’Oréal Bold.
Here's a sneak peek at a few of the companies we've backed:
Compact — the all-in-one productivity app.
RhizeUp — bioengineered Rhizobium for sustainable agriculture.
It was scrappy, fast, and raw zero-to-one experimentation. So, in the spirit of that tradition, we're keeping the door open. Through the Sandbox Fund, we'll continue to incubate founders 18 and under—no industry focus, no warm intro needed. If your company is solving a real problem, we want to hear from you.
To apply, send an email to sandboxincubator@gmail.com with your pitch.