Win research funding
in your sleep.

AI-native infrastructure for government-funded research. It surfaces the grants your faculty can win, shapes the proposals that win them, and opens the doors to the program managers who fund them.

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Grants awarded to researchers at

The hardest part of defense innovation isn't the breakthrough. It's the transition. Brilliant research loses funding for reasons that have nothing to do with the science: the wrong program, the wrong moment, the wrong room. Kernel closes that gap: matching research to the funding it can win, and shaping the case that wins it.

The infrastructure between your faculty and the funding they can win.

A proprietary engine sits across the entire defense funding landscape — every agency, solicitation, and program manager. It continuously scores your faculty against thousands of live opportunities, surfaces the grant each is most likely to win, and drafts the case that wins it.

We handle every step, not just the search.

Most tools hand a researcher a list of grants and hope they apply. We take it from their work all the way to a submitted proposal, handling everything in between for them.

Input

Researchers

Faculty opt in; we learn their work.

Match

AI matching

Surface the grants each can win.

Craft

Proposal

We write the white paper & proposal.

Connect

PM intros

Warm intros from our network.

Submit

Submission

We file it, complete and on time.

Outcome

Awarded

Funding in hand.

↺  Self-learning: every outcome feeds back, so matches sharpen over time

Frontier science, fielded.

Real university research Kernel has helped move from the lab toward the field.

The team behind it.

A frontier-AI founder, a former Army Ranger, and the insiders who've moved millions into university labs. Together they cover every side of how research gets funded, under one roof.

The Kernel team: Prashaant Ranganathan, Jeffrey Decker and Nilay Papila
Group photo → images/team.jpg
Prashaant Ranganathan, BSAI & Machine Learning · a16z-backed founder · Stanford CS & Design
Nilay Papila, PhDAssistant Director, American Research Foundry · aerospace engineer
Jeffrey Decker, PhDFormer U.S. Army Ranger · Managing Director, American Research Foundry · Hacking for Defense

The track record.

At Stanford, where it began, Kernel became one of the university's largest channels for Navy and Army research funding. We're now opening that same engine to R1 institutions across America.

$16.19M
DoD funding enabled
20
Projects funded
14.4%
of Stanford's ONR & ARL funding

Nominate your university.

We're onboarding a limited founding cohort of American R1s this cycle. Tell us about your research office, and we'll take it from there.