Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the VLC founder and lead developer behind VLC Media Player (which crossed 6 billion downloads), has turned his attention to robotics.

His new Paris-based startup, Kyber, raised $5 million in a seed funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners (the same VC firm that backed massive AI players like Anthropic and Mistral AI).

Kempf is leveraging his two decades of open-source video streaming expertise to build what he describes as the “nervous system for the physical AI era.”

1. What Exactly is Kyber?

Kyber is an open-source Software Development Kit (SDK) designed for real-time control of remote machines. It is built directly on top of FFmpeg and VLC—the very media infrastructure Kempf helped author.

The platform targets what Kempf calls “split-location compute” use cases: situations where the human operator or AI brain, the computer processor, and the physical machine are all in completely different places. This includes:

  • Robotics & Humanoids: Giving physical AI models a low-latency connection to their physical bodies.
  • Autonomous Drones & Fleets: Controlling or monitoring drone swarms from a central command center.
  • Remote Vehicles: Operating delivery or industrial vehicles from miles away.
  • Remote IT Access: Actively positioning itself as an open-source challenger to legacy software like Citrix.

2. The Tech Secret: 8-Millisecond Latency

In robotics and physical AI, network lag isn’t just annoying—it’s dangerous. A few hundred milliseconds of delay can cause a drone to travel several meters off-course or a robotic arm to miss its target.

Traditional streaming protocols like WebRTC were built to let humans talk to each other, not to coordinate machines. Kyber completely redesigns this loop using the QUIC network protocol to sync video, audio, sensor telemetry, and control inputs into a single stream.

In technical demonstrations, Kyber achieved a “glass-to-glass” latency of just 8 milliseconds—the total time it takes for a camera frame to be captured on the robot, encoded, sent over the network, decoded, and displayed to an operator or AI agent.

3. The Scaling Bottleneck

Kempf pointed out that while companies can easily manage a few thousand remote-controlled or autonomous vehicles today, scaling to hundreds of millions of physical AI devices requires an entirely new tier of software architecture. Kyber is built to handle the intense data tracking and observability required to monitor massive device fleets simultaneously. It is a bet on the same physical-AI wave fuelling Tesla’s modular AI hardware and Elon Musk’s forecast of more robots than people.

4. Staying True to Open Source

True to Kempf’s roots, Kyber is using an open-core model. The foundational software code is being made freely available to the developer community under a dual license to encourage widespread, global adoption.

To make money, the 25-person company sells productized, secure enterprise versions to corporate clients and deploys forward-deployed engineers for custom corporate rollouts. The platform is already being tested and deployed across the defense, telecommunications, robotics, and AI sectors.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Kyber?

Kyber is an open-source SDK built by VLC founder Jean-Baptiste Kempf for real-time remote control of machines — robots, drones and vehicles. Built on FFmpeg, VLC and the QUIC protocol, it has demonstrated “glass-to-glass” latency of just 8 milliseconds.

Who founded VLC?

VLC Media Player’s lead developer is Jean-Baptiste Kempf, who has guided the open-source project past 6 billion downloads. His new Paris-based startup, Kyber, applies that streaming expertise to controlling physical AI and robots.

How much has Kyber raised?

Kyber raised $5 million in a seed round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, an early backer of AI companies such as Anthropic and Mistral AI.

How is Kyber different from WebRTC?

Traditional streaming protocols like WebRTC were designed for humans talking to each other, not for coordinating machines. Kyber redesigns the loop using the QUIC network protocol to combine video, audio, sensor telemetry, and control inputs into a single low-latency stream, achieving roughly 8 milliseconds of glass-to-glass latency suited to robotics and physical AI.

Is Kyber free and open source?

Kyber uses an open-core model: its foundational software code is freely available to developers under a dual license, while the company makes money by selling productized, secure enterprise versions to corporate clients and deploying engineers for custom rollouts.