Kyber raises $5M to build the real-time infrastructure layer for physical AI

Paris / San Francisco, June 10, 2026. Kyber emerges from stealth with $5 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Ovni Capital and Kima Ventures. Founded by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the engineer behind VLC Media Player and FFmpeg, Kyber is building the open-source real-time infrastructure that connects humans and AI agents to robots, drones, and autonomous systems, from anywhere in the world, with virtually no delay.

The invisible layer that physical AI has been missing

There is a category of technology that most people never think about. It has no interface. It simply runs, quietly, until the day it becomes so foundational that the world cannot function without it.

Jean-Baptiste Kempf has spent twenty years building exactly that kind of technology. First VLC, the media player quietly installed on four billion devices. Then FFmpeg, the codec library running inside nearly every video platform on earth. Both became essential, invisible pieces of the internet's infrastructure.

Kyber is built on that same conviction, applied to a new frontier: the physical world.

As AI moves off the screen and into robots, drones, surgical systems, and autonomous vehicles, one challenge becomes universal: real-time interaction. A robot cannot afford to buffer. A drone can't lag. A machine controlled remotely should feel as responsive as if it were right in front of you.

Until now, the infrastructure to make that possible simply didn't exist.

Why latency is a critical problem, and how Kyber solves it

Most real-time systems today are built on top of WebRTC, a protocol designed for video calls. At 200 milliseconds of delay, a remote-controlled vehicle has already traveled meters past where the operator meant to stop it. At 8 milliseconds, what Kyber enables, the machine feels like a direct extension of the operator.

Kyber provides a single SDK that synchronizes everything required for real-time machine control:

• Video, audio, sensor data, and control inputs, all synchronized to a single clock

• End-to-end latency as low as 8 milliseconds, below the threshold of human perception

• Open at its core, deployable on-premise, in the cloud, or in hybrid environments

Designed for robotics, XR, drones, autonomous vehicles, AI agents, remote desktop, and the next generation of physical AI applications.

Already in commercial deployment with leading players in defense, telco, robotics, and AI, Kyber is a 26-person team of specialized engineers drawn from robotics, networking, low-latency computing, and video infrastructure.

The investors backing Kyber's vision

The $5M seed round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the world's leading global venture firms, with participation from Ovni Capital and Kima Ventures.

"As we've invested across AI and robotics, we kept seeing the same pattern: the models were getting smarter, but the infrastructure connecting them to the physical world wasn't keeping up. That led us to dig down the stack and ask what was actually missing. Kyber is one of the most compelling answers we found to that problem." Antoine Moyroud, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners

What comes next

The funding will accelerate Kyber's development of the protocol layer connecting humans and AI agents to machines in real time, across every industry where autonomous systems are becoming critical.

As Jean-Baptiste Kempf says:

"In the next years, there will be numerous autonomous machines roaming around, and Kyber will produce the key software to build, control and observe those machines in real-time."

Physical AI is moving fast. The machines are getting smarter. Now the infrastructure has to keep up.

Learn more at kyber.tech

About Kyber

Founded in Paris by Jean-Baptiste Kempf, the engineer behind VLC and FFmpeg, Kyber builds the open-source real-time infrastructure layer for physical AI. Backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ovni Capital, and Kima Ventures.

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Lightspeed is a global, multi-stage venture capital firm managing over $50B in assets. Since 2000, Lightspeed has backed some of the world's most innovative companies including Anthropic, Mistral, Snap, Wiz, and more.

Website: lightspeedhq.com

About Ovni Capital

Ovni Capital is a French venture capital firm backing entrepreneurs building the next generation of strategic technologies, from deep tech to infrastructure.

Website: ovni.capital

About Kima Ventures

Founded by Xavier Niel, Kima Ventures is one of Europe's most active seed investors, backing ambitious technology founders from the earliest stages.

Website: https://www.kimaventures.com

About Les Echos

Les Echos is France's leading business and financial daily newspaper, covering the latest news in economics, technology, and innovation.

Website: lesechos.fr