Kyber, a French startup founded by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, lead developer of VLC media player, has raised $5 million in funding led by Lightspeed. The company aims to provide low-latency control infrastructure for robots, drones, and remote devices, entering the rapidly growing physical AI sector.
The core product is a real-time control SDK.
Kyber's core product is a software development kit designed to synchronize video, audio, sensor data, and control commands, with the goal of minimizing latency in remote operation scenarios. Kempf believes that in the coming years, streets will be filled with robots and drones, and the stability of these systems will depend on the underlying transmission and control capabilities.
The company positions itself as an infrastructure provider for scenarios where people, computing power, and execution endpoints are located in different places. In addition to robots and drones, this system can also be used for remote IT access and other applications. Kempf noted that in real-world device control, millisecond-level latency can impact user experience and outcomes.
Extending from video streaming technology to IoT devices
Kyber’s technical approach is inspired by video streaming processing. The project was initially launched as a side project by Kempf while he was CTO at the cloud gaming company Shadow, leading many to easily associate it with VLC’s background. However, the company emphasizes that the real challenge lies not just in transmitting video, but also in optimizing performance for varying device capabilities and maintaining stability at scale.
Some well-resourced companies have previously built similar systems for applications such as remote driving, but those solutions typically serve only a single business. Kempf believes that as the scale of management expands from thousands to millions of devices, the requirements for system design and operations will increase significantly.
Has entered commercial deployment phase
Kyber currently has a team of about 25 people, with its headquarters in Paris and offices in San Francisco and Singapore. The company states that its products are already in commercial deployment in defense, telecommunications, robotics, and AI.
- This round of funding amounts to $5 million.
- Key focus areas include robotics, drones, and remote IT.
- Customers span industries such as defense, telecommunications, and AI.
Among these, remote IT access is one of the most in-demand services today. Kempf said the company aims to do more than just replace Citrix—it wants to turn capabilities that large enterprises previously spent years and tens of millions of dollars to build internally into accessible, off-the-shelf products for a broader range of businesses.
In announcing its investment, Lightspeed stated that the upper limit of physical AI’s capabilities largely depends on the reliability of the underlying system. For Kyber, this funding round signals that capital markets are beginning to focus on the infrastructure layer behind robotics and AI deployment—not just the models themselves.