Propeller's Kernel Camp graduates first cohort of MENA AI startups

Venture firm Propeller has graduated the first cohort of Kernel Camp, an eight-week Silicon Valley residency that this year hosted five AI and deep‑tech startups from Jordan, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia. The cohort — selected from the top 3% of applicants — completed an intensive programme of mentorship dinners, an angel investor event on Sand Hill Road and site visits, culminating in a final showcase on May 30 that featured live pitches and a fireside chat with Writer CTO and co‑founder Waseem Alshikh.

"Founders from the Middle East and North Africa have the technical ability but have lacked the networks that early‑stage U.S. founders take for granted," Propeller said of Kernel Camp's premise.

Kernel Camp’s inaugural class comprised five startups tackling enterprise AI, robotics observability and security. The graduates are:

• FirstFlow (Jordan) — an in‑chat onboarding platform that guides users from the first message to full adoption of AI agents;
• Flowbrave (Morocco) — converts static business processes into dynamic, AI‑guided workflows;
• Nexguards (Egypt) — runs AI‑powered social engineering simulations and personalised security awareness training for enterprises;
• OORB (Tunisia) — a robotics observability platform that captures every robot run, scores reliability and identifies changes when behaviour breaks;
• Techbible (Morocco) — maps every software and AI tool inside a company to track spend, usage and renewals.

Throughout the residency, founders attended weekly mentorship dinners with executives from Airbnb, Meta, OpenAI, JPMorgan, Cartesia, Rho, Lux Capital, Mozilla Ventures, Plug and Play and Mentors Fund. Propeller also staged an angel investor event at Silicon Valley Bank’s Sand Hill Road offices to give the cohort direct access to Bay Area angels. The final showcase included a panel on the rising role of MENA talent in Silicon Valley that featured Ahmed Rashad of Perle AI and Ahmad Saddedin of Y Combinator‑backed Corgea.

The programme is an extension of Propeller’s cross‑border strategy. In November 2025 the firm launched a $50 million Fund III targeting seed to pre‑Series A startups in AI infrastructure and AI‑native software across the U.S. and MENA. By the time of the Fund III announcement, Propeller had already backed five U.S.‑focused companies from the new vehicle, including developer tooling firm Codemod, networking startup Netpreme and cybersecurity companies Stealthium and Ciphero AI.

Propeller’s earlier vehicles, backed by the Saudi Venture Capital Company and Jordan’s Innovative Startups and SMEs Fund, built a portfolio of more than 30 startups, including Clarity, ActivePieces and Maqsam. The firm now operates across Amman, Riyadh, Boston and Silicon Valley.

Outlook

Propeller is already preparing a second Kernel Camp cohort, framing the first as a proof of concept for its thesis that bridging MENA technical talent to U.S. market networks accelerates growth. With Fund III capital and an expanding footprint in Amman, Riyadh, Boston and Silicon Valley, Propeller is positioning Kernel Camp as a repeatable funnel for startups that need early‑stage US investor and executive access alongside mentorship from established AI and tech companies.