Visionary Founder: Your Videos Ran Seamlessly. Now He’s Engineering…

Key Takeaways:

• **Visionary Founder, Robotic Future:** Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the open-source legend behind VLC Media Player, is now spearheading Kyber, a platform designed for a future where “hundreds of millions of robots and drones” operate autonomously and remotely.
• **Low-Latency Infrastructure for Physical AI:** Kyber provides a critical infrastructure layer, an SDK, that synchronizes video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs in real-time with minimal latency. This capability is essential for the burgeoning field of physical AI and remote device control, a vision that has attracted $5 million in funding from Lightspeed.
• **Open-Source Roots, Enterprise Reach:** Rooted in Kempf’s open-source philosophy, Kyber offers a core project freely accessible while also providing a productized, enterprise-grade version with dedicated support from Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs). The company is actively targeting defense, telco, robotics, and remote IT sectors globally.

From Streaming Billions to Controlling Millions: The Next Frontier for VLC’s Creator

You’ve probably used VLC Media Player, the ubiquitous free video player adorned with the orange traffic-cone icon — a software phenomenon downloaded more than 6 billion times worldwide. Its lead developer, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, an undeniable titan in the open-source community, has consistently proven his uncanny ability to anticipate and shape digital trends. Now, Kempf is setting his sights on an even more ambitious future: one where robots become almost as commonplace as his iconic media player.

Kempf is not just predicting this future; he’s actively building its foundational infrastructure. Convinced that “hundreds of millions of robots and drones” will be navigating our streets, skies, and factories in the coming years, this French serial entrepreneur is channeling his deep expertise into Kyber. The new venture aims to create a robust infrastructure layer for controlling and managing remote devices in real-time, preparing for an era of pervasive physical automation.

Kyber: The Real-Time OS for the Physical AI Age

At the heart of Kyber’s offering is a sophisticated Software Development Kit (SDK) meticulously engineered to synchronize diverse data streams — video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs — with an absolute minimum of latency. This intricate ballet of data synchronization is crucial for any application where an operator or an AI agent needs to interact instantly and precisely with a device in the physical world.

This technological focus aligns perfectly with the burgeoning rise of physical AI, a sector gaining significant traction among venture capitalists. It’s a key reason why the Paris-based startup successfully secured a $5 million seed round led by Lightspeed, a prominent American VC firm with an impressive portfolio that includes AI heavyweights like Anthropic and Mistral AI. As Lightspeed articulated in their LinkedIn announcement of the investment, “Physical AI is only as good as the underlying systems running it.” Kyber positions itself as that critical underlying system.

Beyond AI: Bridging the Distance Between Operator and Action

While crucial for AI, Kyber’s potential applications extend far beyond intelligent machines. Kempf explained to TechCrunch that the platform is meticulously designed for “all the use cases where the person who’s operating is not in the same place as the compute, which is not in the same place as the action.” This expansive definition encompasses everything from remote surgical robots and autonomous vehicle fleets to industrial drones inspecting infrastructure and even advanced remote IT management.

The challenge of remote control is one half of the equation; the other, equally critical half, is speed. This imperative for instant responsiveness is what inspired the startup’s evocative name, Kyber, a direct nod to the fictional lightsaber crystals in the Star Wars universe. Kempf emphasizes, “If you control things in the real world, every millisecond matters.” A fraction of a second delay could mean the difference between success and failure, or even safety and danger, in critical real-world applications.

Leveraging Streaming Expertise for Next-Gen IoT

Kyber’s innovative approach to eliminating lag is deeply rooted in advanced video-streaming technology. The company itself began as a side project Kempf developed during his tenure as CTO at cloud gaming startup Shadow, a natural precursor that laid the groundwork for high-performance, low-latency data transfer. This early focus on streaming makes the connection to VLC Media Player an intuitive and powerful one, leveraging decades of expertise in optimizing media delivery.

However, the challenges of the Internet of Things (IoT) and physical devices demand more than just streaming prowess. IoT expertise is equally vital for comprehensive optimization — the ability to finely tune performance across a vast spectrum of devices, each with varying computational capabilities, and to do so at an unprecedented scale. This granular optimization, ensuring peak efficiency from a tiny sensor to a complex robot, is the other core pillar of Kyber’s technological offering.

Solving the Scale Challenge: From Thousands to Millions

Kempf acknowledges that some large corporations with specific needs and ample resources have already developed similar custom software solutions for their own remote operations, such as managing remote driving systems. “But the largest fleets today have maybe 2,000 or 3,000 vehicles,” Kempf points out. “Imagine you need to manage millions of them; that’s not the same thing.” This exponential jump in scale is where Kyber aims to provide a standardized, robust, and scalable solution that bypasses the need for every company to reinvent the wheel.

This massive leap in scale also dramatically raises the stakes for observability — the critical ability to know that systems are functioning correctly and precisely. This will become even more paramount when AI agents, rather than human operators, are tasked with managing entire fleets and sprawling networks of devices. Even at a much smaller scale, the benefits are tangible: imagine the efficiency of pushing a software update to thousands of devices remotely, eliminating the logistical nightmare and cost of physically accessing each one.

Open Source Heart, Enterprise Mind: Kyber’s Business Model

Reflecting Kempf’s foundational roots and commitment to accessibility, the core Kyber project is open source. This strategy not only fosters broad adoption and community contribution but also means Kyber’s technology could eventually benefit a far wider range of companies than just its direct paying customers. For enterprises requiring robust, supported solutions, the company sells a productized version, tailored for large-scale and mission-critical deployments.

Kyber’s service model extends beyond just software. Similar to companies like Palantir, Kyber also offers hands-on, custom deployment and integration support through its Forward-Deployed Engineers (FDEs). These specialized engineers work directly with clients, embedding themselves to ensure seamless implementation and optimal performance, effectively becoming an extension of the client’s team.

FDEs constitute a significant portion of Kyber’s current team of 25 full-time staffers. While headquartered in Paris, the startup maintains offices in San Francisco and Singapore, strategically positioned to support what it anticipates will be a diverse and global client base across a multitude of industries. The company reports that it is already engaged in commercial deployment with customers spanning defense, telecommunications, robotics, and advanced AI applications.

Targeting High-Impact Segments: Robotics, Drones, and Remote IT

To maximize its impact and focus its efforts, Kyber has strategically prioritized three key market segments: robotics (encompassing everything from industrial automation to service robots), drones of every kind (from delivery to surveillance), and remote IT access. Demand in this last segment, in particular, has been remarkably strong. In the remote IT space, Kempf reveals that Kyber aspires to be more than just a challenger to established players like Citrix, implying a broader vision for managing distributed IT infrastructure with unprecedented efficiency.

While remote IT access may not possess the immediate glamour of advanced robotics, Kempf appears genuinely energized by the profound challenges it presents — and Kyber’s careers page subtly hints at the underlying motivation: “The companies that tried to solve it spent years and tens of millions building custom solutions they’ll never share. We’re building the version everyone else can use.” This ethos of democratization and standardization of complex, essential technology is a hallmark of Kempf’s career, echoing the universal accessibility of VLC.

Bottom Line

Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the architect of VLC’s global reach, is now poised to build the invisible infrastructure that will power the next era of automation. Kyber addresses a critical void in the burgeoning physical AI and IoT landscape, providing the ultra-low-latency synchronization essential for managing millions of remote devices. By blending open-source accessibility with enterprise-grade solutions and hands-on deployment, Kyber is not just selling software; it’s enabling a future where the physical and digital worlds seamlessly intertwine, making complex remote operations as reliable and ubiquitous as playing a video on your computer.