Kyber aims to make remote robot control as smooth as VLC video player

At a glance:

• Kyber raised $5 million led by Lightspeed to power low‑latency control of robots, drones and remote IT devices
• The open‑source SDK, built by VLC founder Jean‑Baptiste Kempf, synchronises video, audio, sensor data and control inputs in real time
• Kyber’s 25‑person team operates from Paris, San Francisco and Singapore and is already deployed in defence, telco, robotics and AI firms

What kyber does

Kyber is an infrastructure layer that lets operators control remote devices—robots, drones or computers—from anywhere in the world with near‑zero lag. The core of the platform is an open‑source SDK that bundles video, audio, sensor streams and control commands into a single, tightly synchronised feed. By treating the video stream as the timing backbone, Kyber can keep latency to a few milliseconds, a crucial factor when a robot’s arm must react to visual cues in real time.

The idea grew out of Jean‑Baptiste Kempf’s work on VLC Media Player, the free video player that has been downloaded more than 6 billion times. While serving as CTO of cloud‑gaming startup Shadow, Kempf built a side project that used VLC‑style streaming tricks to minimise lag. That prototype evolved into Kyber, named after the lightsaber crystals in Star Wars to highlight the importance of every millisecond in physical AI.

Funding and market context

In early 2024 Kyber closed a $5 million seed round led by Lightspeed, a venture firm that has also backed Anthropic and Mistral AI. Lightspeed’s LinkedIn announcement stressed that “physical AI is only as good as the underlying systems running it,” underscoring the strategic relevance of low‑latency control stacks for the next wave of AI‑driven hardware.

The funding will help Kyber scale from managing fleets of a few thousand devices—typical for today’s remote‑driving pilots—to handling millions of autonomous units. At that scale, traditional bespoke solutions become untenable, and the need for observability, automatic updates and fleet‑wide health checks grows dramatically.

Technology and latency focus

Kyber’s latency‑reduction strategy leans heavily on video‑streaming technology. By using the same adaptive bitrate and packet‑loss recovery mechanisms that make VLC robust on unreliable networks, Kyber can keep a robot’s video feed and control loop tightly coupled. The SDK also auto‑tunes performance based on the compute resources available on each edge device, ensuring that even modest hardware can participate in a high‑speed control loop.

Beyond streaming, Kyber incorporates IoT‑style optimisation: it monitors device health, throttles bandwidth when needed, and provides a unified API for sensor fusion. This dual focus—high‑performance video plus intelligent resource management—sets Kyber apart from generic remote‑desktop tools and from custom in‑house stacks that large manufacturers have built for niche use cases.

Target markets and customers

Kyber has identified three primary verticals: robotics, drones of every kind, and remote IT access. In robotics, the platform enables operators to pilot warehouse arms, inspection bots or autonomous delivery units without being tethered to the same location as the compute node. Drone operators can stream high‑definition video while issuing precise flight commands, a capability critical for inspection, agriculture and security missions.

The remote‑IT segment positions Kyber as a potential challenger to legacy solutions like Citrix. By delivering a low‑latency, video‑centric experience, Kyber promises faster troubleshooting and software deployment for edge servers, industrial PLCs and other headless devices. The startup already reports commercial deployments with customers in defence, telecommunications, robotics and AI, indicating early traction across both public and private sectors.

Business model and team

Kyber follows a hybrid open‑source / enterprise model. The core SDK remains freely available under an open‑source licence, encouraging community contributions and broad adoption. Enterprise customers, however, can purchase a productized version that includes commercial‑grade support, SLA guarantees and access to forward‑deployed engineers (FDEs) who assist with custom deployments.

The company’s staff of 25 full‑time employees is split across its Paris headquarters and satellite offices in San Francisco and Singapore, reflecting its ambition to serve a global client base. FDEs form a large part of the workforce, providing on‑site integration and performance tuning for large‑scale fleets. By bundling software with hands‑on engineering, Kyber aims to differentiate itself from pure‑play SaaS vendors and capture a sizable share of the emerging physical‑AI market.

Looking ahead

As AI agents become the primary decision‑makers for autonomous fleets, the demand for reliable, low‑latency control infrastructure will only intensify. Kyber’s emphasis on open‑source collaboration, real‑time video synchronization and global engineering support positions it to become a de‑facto standard for remote device orchestration. Investors, industry observers and potential customers will be watching how the startup scales its technology from a few thousand test units to the promised millions of robots and drones roaming streets in the coming years.