Propeller, a venture capital firm focused on AI infrastructure, has wrapped up Kernel Camp, its inaugural deep-tech residency program that brought MENA startup founders to Silicon Valley for an eight-week immersion in the Bay Area’s startup ecosystem.
Five startups from Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, and Egypt were selected from the top 3% of applicants to participate. The cohort spans robotics observability, AI agent tooling, cybersecurity, and enterprise operations — reflecting the breadth of deep-tech talent emerging from the Middle East and North Africa.
The participating startups included OORB (Tunisia), a robotics observability platform that tracks robot reliability and behavior; Techbible (Morocco), an AI stack manager that maps SaaS and AI agent usage across organizations; FirstFlow (Jordan), an in-chat onboarding layer for AI agents; Nexguards (Egypt), an AI-powered social engineering simulation platform for enterprise security training; and Flowbrave (Morocco), an intelligent operations platform bridging static processes with AI-guided workflows.
Throughout the program, founders attended weekly mentorship dinners with leaders from Airbnb, Meta, OpenAI, JP Morgan, Lux Capital, Mozilla Ventures, and Plug and Play. The cohort also participated in a dedicated angel investor event at Silicon Valley Bank’s offices on Sand Hill Road, plus site visits to leading AI and software companies.
“We believe MENA produces founders capable of building globally significant companies, but talent alone isn’t enough,” said Zaid Farekh, founder and managing partner at Propeller. “Kernel Camp is designed to immerse founders in the networks, operating culture, and technical communities that have historically accelerated the world’s most ambitious startups.”
The program closed with a showcase on May 30 featuring live pitches, a panel on MENA talent in Silicon Valley with founders from Perle AI and Corgea (YC S23), and a fireside chat with Writer co-founder Waseem Alshikh. Propeller is already planning the next edition.
For U.S. investors looking for frontier AI deal flow, Kernel Camp offers a curated pipeline into a region that’s often overlooked but clearly producing world-class deep-tech founders.
Source: TechAfrica News
