VLC Creator Jean-Baptiste Kempf Raises $5 Million For Kyber Real-Time Robot Control Software

Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the lead developer behind the free VLC Media Player, is building Kyber, a Paris-based startup raising $5 million to develop software for real-time control of remote devices.

“The VLC founder is building a low-latency layer to sync video, sensors and controls in milliseconds”

mezha.net

Kyber’s infrastructure layer is designed to synchronise video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs with minimal latency so operators can manage robots and drones even when the operator, computing resources, and physical device are all in different places.

mezha.net

Kempf told TechCrunch, “If you control things in the real world, every millisecond matters,” linking the platform’s goal to the speed needed for physical AI.

TechCrunch also reports that Kyber’s core software is an SDK that synchronizes video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs with minimal latency, drawing on Kempf’s streaming expertise from VLC and his work as CTO at cloud gaming startup Shadow.

Lightspeed Venture Partners led Kyber’s $5 million funding round, and TechCrunch says Lightspeed has also backed Anthropic and Mistral AI.

In a LinkedIn post announcing its investment, the American VC firm wrote, “Physical AI is only as good as the underlying systems running it,” framing Kyber as infrastructure rather than an AI application.

TechCrunch

Kyber’s core technology remains open source, while the company generates revenue through enterprise products and customised deployments, according to The Indian Express.

TechCrunch adds that Kyber sells a productized version to enterprise customers and also offers hands-on, custom deployment through forward-deployed engineers, or FDEs, with FDEs making up a large part of the team that currently numbers 25 full-time staffers.

Kempf told TechCrunch that the platform is built 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.”

“Most people know VLC Media Player as the free video player with the iconic orange traffic-cone logo”

The Indian Express

TechCrunch contrasts existing remote-control systems, saying “the largest fleets today have maybe 2,000 or 3,000 vehicles,” while Kyber is aimed at managing millions of robots and drones.

The company says it is already in commercial deployment with customers in defense, telco, robotics, and AI, and it prioritizes three segments: robotics, drones of every kind, and remote IT access.

The Indian Express reports Kyber employs 25 people across offices in Paris, San Francisco, and Singapore, and it says its technology is already being used by customers in sectors including defence, telecommunications, robotics, and artificial intelligence.