  We study the jet quenching parameter $\hat q$ in the initial pre-equilibrium
stages of heavy-ion collisions using the QCD kinetic theory description of the
anisotropic quark-gluon plasma. This allows us to smoothly close the gap in the
literature between the early glasma stage of the collision and the onset of
hydrodynamics. We find that the pre-hydrodynamic evolution of $\hat q$ during
the bottom-up kinetic scenario shows little sensitivity to the initial
conditions, jet energies and models of the transverse momentum cutoff. We also
observe that, similarly to the glasma case, the jet quenching parameter is
enhanced along the beam axis as compared to the transverse direction during
most of the kinetic evolution.
