From VLC to Robots: The Future of Real-Time Control

Many of us are familiar with VLC Media Player, the popular open-source video player known for its orange traffic cone icon. This software has been downloaded over 6 billion times, making it a staple in the digital media world. Its lead developer, Jean-Baptiste Kempf, is now venturing into a new realm: the control of robots and drones.

The Vision for Robotics

Kempf envisions a future where robots and drones will become commonplace, stating that "hundreds of millions" will be navigating our streets in the near future. To facilitate this, he has developed Kyber, a robust infrastructure designed to manage remote devices in real-time.

What is Kyber?

At its core, Kyber provides a software development kit (SDK) that synchronizes video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs with minimal latency. This approach is closely aligned with the increasing prominence of physical AI technologies.

Recently, Kyber secured a $5 million investment round led by Lightspeed, a venture capital firm known for backing influential companies in the AI space. This funding underscores the importance of having efficient systems in place to run physical AI.

Importance of Speed in Control Systems

Kempf emphasizes that in real-world applications, every millisecond counts. This urgency is reflected in the name Kyber, which draws inspiration from the lightsaber crystals in Star Wars. The goal is to eliminate lag, a challenge rooted in video streaming technology.

The company began as a side project during Kempf's tenure as CTO at a cloud gaming startup, leveraging expertise in streaming to enhance remote device control.

Scalability and Observability

Managing a few thousand vehicles is one thing, but scaling to millions presents a whole new challenge. This exponential growth in scale increases the need for observability, ensuring that systems operate effectively, especially when AI agents take over management duties.

Even at a smaller scale, Kyber offers significant advantages, such as the ability to update software remotely without the need for physical access to devices. This flexibility positions Kyber to serve a diverse range of companies.

Open Source and Enterprise Solutions

Staying true to his open-source roots, Kempf has made the core project available to the community while also offering a commercial version tailored for enterprise customers. This dual approach allows a wide range of users to leverage the technology.

Team and Global Presence

Kyber is not just about software; the company also provides hands-on deployment support through a team of forward-deployed engineers (FDEs). Currently, the company has 25 full-time employees and operates from offices in Paris, San Francisco, and Singapore.

The startup is already seeing commercial deployment across sectors such as defense, telecommunications, robotics, and AI, indicating a promising future.

Targeted Segments for Growth

To streamline operations, Kyber is focusing on three key areas: robotics, various types of drones, and remote IT access. Each segment shows robust demand, and the company aims to carve out a significant niche in these markets.

Technology teams are watching from vlc to robots: the future of real-time control closely because changes in this space often arrive faster than internal policies can adapt.

For product and engineering leaders, the practical question is how this could reshape roadmaps, vendor choices, and security reviews over the next few quarters.

Organizations that document lessons early tend to respond more calmly when similar patterns appear again.

In many companies, the first impact shows up in planning meetings: teams reassess priorities, revisit risk registers, and check whether existing tooling still fits.

Smaller businesses feel these shifts too. A single platform change or market move can affect customer trust, delivery timelines, and hiring plans.

The most resilient teams treat stories like this as input for quarterly reviews rather than one-day headlines.

If your business depends on modern software, ERP, VoIP, or customer-facing apps, staying informed helps you separate noise from decisions that require action.

Looking ahead, disciplined follow-through matters: assign owners, set review dates, and measure whether your response improved outcomes.

Security and compliance stakeholders should ask whether current controls still match the pace of change described in this update.

Operations leaders can reduce friction by translating the headline into a short internal brief with clear next steps for each department.

Customer support teams may see early signals through tickets, outages, or policy questions long before leadership reviews are scheduled.

Finance and procurement groups should note whether licensing, vendor risk, or implementation costs need revisiting after this development.

Training programs benefit from timely updates so staff understand what changed, what did not change, and what requires escalation.

Architecture reviews are a practical place to test assumptions, especially when new tools, platforms, or threats enter the conversation.

Documentation quality often determines how quickly a company recovers from surprises; capture decisions while context is still clear.

Technology teams are watching from vlc to robots: the future of real-time control closely because changes in this space often arrive faster than internal policies can adapt.

• Robotics
• Drones of all kinds
• Remote IT access