From VLC to Robots: Jean‑Baptiste Kempf’s New Real‑Time Control Platform for AI‑Powered Machines

Many readers are familiar with VLC Media Player, the free application distinguished by its orange traffic‑cone logo, which has been downloaded over six billion times. According to its creator, Jean‑Baptiste Kempf, robotic systems are poised to achieve similar ubiquity.

Believing that hundreds of millions of robots and drones will soon be operating in urban environments, French entrepreneur and open‑source veteran Jean‑Baptiste Kempf has developed Kyber, an infrastructure layer that enables real‑time control of remote devices. At its core lies an SDK that synchronizes video, audio, sensor data, and control signals with minimal latency.

This timing aligns with the growth of physical AI, contributing to Kyber’s recent $5 million Series A round led by Lightspeed — a firm that also supports Anthropic and Mistral AI. Lightspeed noted, “Physical AI is only as strong as the underlying systems that run it.”

Kyber’s utility extends beyond AI. Kempf explained to TechCrunch that the platform is designed for any scenario where the operator, the compute resources, and the action are physically separated.

Remote control constitutes one side of the equation; speed is the other — an aspect that inspired the startup’s name, referencing the lightsaber crystals from Star Wars. “When you control real‑world devices, every millisecond counts,” Kempf stated.

Kyber’s strategy to eliminate latency draws directly from video‑streaming technology. Originating as a side project while Kempf served as CTO at Shadow, a cloud‑gaming startup, its streaming foundation naturally links to VLC. Equally important is IoT expertise, which enables performance tuning tailored to each device’s computational capacity and scale — key components of Kyber’s solution.

Kempf notes that other firms with sufficient resources have already created comparable software for applications such as remote driving. “Current fleets top out around 2,000‑3,000 vehicles. Scaling to millions introduces fundamentally different challenges.”

Scaling to millions intensifies the need for robust observability — ensuring systems function reliably becomes critical when AI agents, rather than humans, oversee fleets and networks. Even at modest sizes, a key advantage is the ability to push updates remotely without accessing each device physically.

Spanning from a few devices to millions, Kyber’s user base will encompass many more organizations than those that become paying customers. Aligning with Kempf’s open‑source background, the core platform remains open source, while Kyber offers a commercial, productized version for enterprises. In addition to software, the company provides on‑site, custom deployment via forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs), mirroring models used by firms like Palantir.

FDEs constitute a significant portion of Kyber’s 25‑person workforce. Headquartered in Paris with additional offices in San Francisco and Singapore, the startup serves a global clientele across multiple sectors. It reports commercial deployments with customers in defense, telecommunications, robotics, and AI.

Kyber is concentrating on three verticals: robotics, all types of drones, and remote IT access — where demand is especially strong. In remote IT access, Kempf aims to surpass the role of a Citrix competitor, indicating a sizable total addressable market.

While remote IT access may lack glamour, Kempf is enthusiastic about tackling the problem, a sentiment reflected in Kyber’s job listings: “Companies that attempted to solve this spent years and tens of millions creating proprietary solutions they never shared. We’re delivering a solution that everyone can adopt.”

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