You’ve doubtlessly outmoded VLC Media Player, the free video participant with the orange website online visitors-cone icon — it’s been downloaded greater than 6 billion cases. But per its lead developer, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, robots will rapidly be nearly as ubiquitous as his originate provide video tool.
Contented that “heaps of of hundreds and hundreds of robots and drones” will be roaming the streets in a few years, this French serial entrepreneur and originate-provide epic has been building Kyber, an infrastructure layer for controlling faraway devices in exact time. Its core tool is an SDK that synchronizes video, audio, sensor facts, and abet watch over inputs with minimal latency.
This strains up effectively with the upward thrust of bodily AI, and it’s half of why the Paris-essentially based entirely startup changed into succesful of plan conclude a $5 million round led by Lightspeed, which has moreover backed Anthropic and Mistral AI. “Physical AI is perfect as factual because the underlying programs working it,” the American VC company wrote in a LinkedIn post announcing its funding.
Kyber’s doable applications crawl effectively beyond AI, though. Kempf told TechCrunch the platform is built for “the total employ cases the attach the particular person who’s working is no longer within the same location because the compute, which is no longer within the same location because the action.”
Faraway abet watch over is one half of the equation; velocity is the opposite — and it’s what inspired the startup’s identify, a nod to the lightsaber crystals in Smartly-known person Wars. “Have to you abet watch over things within the exact world, every millisecond matters,” Kempf acknowledged.
Kyber’s technique to eliminating trail is rooted firmly in video-streaming expertise. The company began as a facet venture Kempf built while CTO at cloud gaming startup Shadow, and its early focal level on streaming makes the VLC connection a straightforward one to plan. But IoT expertise matters legal as great for optimization — tuning performance to a tool’s available compute, at scale — the opposite core fragment of what Kyber does.
Kempf says other corporations with the resources and the need contain already built identical tool for their very bear employ cases, admire faraway driving. “However the greatest fleets at present time contain perchance 2,000 or 3,000 autos. Agree with you like to abet watch over hundreds and hundreds of them; that’s no longer the same thing.”
That soar in scale moreover raises the stakes on observability — spirited programs are basically working will matter even extra when AI agents, no longer people, are managing whole fleets and networks. Even at great smaller scale, though, there’s a exact back: no longer needing to physically reach every tool legal to push a tool update, as an illustration.
That differ — from a handful of devices to hundreds and hundreds — methodology Kyber’s client snide will seemingly span a ways extra corporations than will ever change into paying possibilities. Appropriate to Kempf’s roots, the core venture is originate provide, while the company sells a productized model to enterprise possibilities. And it’s no longer legal tool: admire Palantir and others, Kyber moreover affords palms-on, custom deployment by forward-deployed engineers, or FDEs.
FDEs upward thrust up a gargantuan half of Kyber’s group, which currently numbers 25 elephantine-time staffers. The startup is headquartered in Paris however has places of work in San Francisco and Singapore to make stronger what it expects will be a world client snide all the scheme by a range of industries. The company says it is already in commercial deployment with possibilities in defense, telco, robotics, and AI.
To focal level its efforts, Kyber has been prioritizing three segments: robotics, drones of all forms, and faraway IT entry, the attach demand has been particularly solid. In that final section, Kempf says Kyber aspires to be greater than legal a Citrix challenger — however even that comparison by myself factors to a substantial total addressable market.
Faraway IT entry isn’t precisely glamorous, however Kempf appears to be like energized by the topic — and Kyber’s careers web shriek hints at why: “The corporations that attempted to clear up it spent years and tens of hundreds and hundreds building custom alternate choices they’ll by no methodology fragment. We’re building the model all people else can employ.”
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As of Could simply 2025, her reporting for TechCrunch specializes in Europe’s most piquant startup tales.
Anna has moderated panels and done onstage interviews at substitute events of all sizes, including predominant tech conferences akin to TechCrunch Disrupt, 4YFN, South Summit, TNW Conference, VivaTech, and lots of extra.
A worn LATAM & Media Editor at The Next Web, startup founder and Sciences Po Paris alum, she’s fluent in extra than one languages, including French, English, Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese.
