Lead developer · President, VideoLAN
VLC media player
Six billion downloads. No ads. No tracking. The world's most-used media player, and a daily refusal to compromise on what that means.
Jean-Baptiste Kempf,
the VLC guy.
President of VideoLAN. Project lead and developer of VLC — six billion downloads, hundreds of millions of users, open source, no ads, no tracking.
Creator and maintainer of dozens of open source projects, in multimedia and beyond.
Founder of Kyber, infrastructure for real-time control of machines: low-latency streaming so good, the machines feel local.
Lecturer, startup advisor, scale-ups CTO, entrepreneur, engineer, open source activist.
Mindful humanist geek.
Paris, FR
6B+ VLC downloads
500M users
8 ms glass-to-glass
20y+ open source
100+ conferences
7 companies created
Latest mumblings.
21·DEC·25
VIDEOLAN
libspatialaudio 0.4: a modern spatial audio library
libspatialaudio 0.4.0 is a major release of VideoLAN’s spatial audio renderer, covering HOA, object rendering, …
24·NOV·25
VIDEOLAN
libdvdnav / libdvdread 7 & libdvdcss 1.5 release: DVD-Audio & more
libdvdread 7, libdvdnav 7 and libdvdcss 1.5 bring full DVD-Audio parsing, navigation and CPXM decryption, …
16·NOV·25
VIDEOLAN
dav1d 1.5 Sonic
dav1d 1.5 Sonic brings improvements across all major architectures, major stack and code size reductions, and …
Things I'm building.
Founder · CEO
Kyber
Ultra-low-latency video over QUIC. 8 ms glass-to-glass — for cloud gaming, telemedicine, robotics, anything you remote-control. Open core.
President · maintainer
VideoLAN + libraries
DVD & Blu-ray stacks, x264, dav1d, dav2d, mirrorbits, libspatialaudio, a cloud storage library. The boring infrastructure the multimedia world quietly runs on.
Creator · with the FFmpeg community
dav1d
World's fastest AV1 decoder. Ships in Firefox, Chrome, most major streaming services, and all major OSes. Hand-tuned assembly where it matters.
In conversation.
Also seen & heard on
- Le MondeProfile · 2024Press
- Les ÉchosOp-ed · sovereigntyPress
- France InterOn the airRadio
- BFM TechInterviewTV
- GDIY#536, #218Podcast
- Underscore_Open Source en FrancePodcast
- Le Meilleur des MondesFrance CultureRadio
- Tech CaféFrench Tech & EuropePodcast
À La French, every Tuesday.
Live every Tuesday
à la French.
with Steeve Morin & Mehdi Medjaoui · 25+ episodes · 271K top views
- 5·MAY·26 L'IA, sauveur ou fossoyeur du mouvement Open Source ? ↗
- 28·APR·26 La résilience tech avec Tariq Krim ↗
- 21·APR·26 On débat IA avec Monsieur Phi ↗
- 14·APR·26 Chacun son IA — OpenClaw & l'IA agentique ↗
- 07·APR·26 IA : tout va trop vite — on fait le point ↗
- 31·MAR·26 Souveraineté numérique, vraiment ? ↗
- 17·MAR·26 Vidéo en temps réel, le pari de Kyber ↗
- 17·FEB·26 Comprendre les SLM — Anastasia Stasenko · 271K ↗
On stage.
| Year | Event | Talk | Where | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | FOSDEM | VLC, FFmpeg, libraries & Kyber — annual update | Brussels | EN |
| 2026 | Epitech Summit | Interview avec le fondateur de VLC | Strasbourg | FR |
| 2025 | SFSCON / FSFE | European SFS Award ceremony | Bolzano | EN |
| 2025 | VideoLAN Dev Days 14th | VDD 2025 | London / UCL | EN |
| 2025 | Sunny Tech | Keynote — Open Source & Souveraineté | Montpellier | FR |
| 2025 | Mile High Video | Ultra-low-latency with Kyber | Denver | EN |
| 2024 | USI 2024 | Le logiciel libre comme levier de souveraineté | Paris | FR |
| 2024 | Demuxed | Real-time video & controls over QUIC | SF / Online | EN |
| 2024 | FOSDEM | State of VLC and the VideoLAN libraries | Brussels | EN |
Bio, short version.
Born in Paris, 1983. Engineering at École Centrale Paris, where I joined, and then led, a small project called VLC that quietly became the most-used media player on Earth — six billion downloads, no ads, no tracking.
I created the VideoLAN non-profit in 2008, and I am still running it, still shipping releases, almost twenty years later. I have contributed to numerous open source projects powering most of the world's video: FFmpeg, x264, dav1d, VLC.
I founded several companies in multimedia and gaming: Videolabs, FFlabs, Klabs, Playruo, Kyber; and led engineering teams from 5 to 300 people as CTO or VP Engineering of Shadow, Veepee, and Scaleway. I advise startups and VC funds, and lecture about open source, multimedia and sovereignty.
I am currently focusing on Kyber, real-time infrastructure for machine control. Robots, drones, vehicles, remote desktops, immersive environments. Distant machines feel local.
Member of the European Open Source Academy. Awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre national du Mérite for my work on open source. Co-hosting À La French. Reading too many emails.
Timeline
- 2003VLCJoins École Centrale Paris and meets VLC.
- 2008VideoLANCreates the non-profit for VLC and becomes president.
- 2012VideolabsFirst company. Multimedia.
- 2018dav1dFastest AV1 decoder. Ships everywhere.
- 2020ShadowCTO — cloud gaming, before it was a category.
- 2021VeepeeVP Eng — e-commerce at scale.
- 2023ScalewayCTO — European cloud, sovereignty.
- 2024KyberFounded. Real-time video over QUIC.
- 2025À La FrenchWeekly podcast launches.
- 2026VLC 4.0Biggest redesign in twenty years.
0_ / Now
What I'm
actually
up to
May 2026
actually
up to
May 2026
What I'm doing, right now.
Building
Kyber. Controlling any machines in distance. Ultra-low-latency video, sensors and control streaming over QUIC. Down to 8 ms glass-to-glass, for robotics, AI, telemedicine, cloud gaming, remote desktop. The hardest part isn't the codec, it's the network.
Shipping
VLC 4.0. Biggest redesign in twenty years. New interface, AV2 decode on a normal laptop (CES 2026), object-based audio, HDR everywhere, gapless playback. Soon.
Co-hosting
À La French. Every Tuesday with Steeve Morin and Mehdi Medjaoui. Tech, founders, sovereignty, AI. We talk about tech, the French Way. We say what we have in our hearts.
Talking about
Digital sovereignty. Why public services must embrace free software. Why libre ≠ open source. Physical AI. European tech that ships.
Reading
Less Twitter, more long-form. Bisannual reading of LOTR. Building a ton of Legos, and listening to operas. Half my screen is GitLab, the other half is dav2d patches.
Reachable at
jb@kempf.pro — I read everything, I answer most. Also LinkedIn, GitLab, the FOSDEM hallway track.
Get in touch.
The easiest way to start a conversation is to write. I read everything that lands in my inbox.
jb@kempf.proFor press & speaking, mention the outlet, deadline and language. For Kyber commercial questions, just say so up front. For VLC / VideoLAN, the project mailing lists are usually faster — but I read here too. PGP on request.
StatusReading email — reply within 48h
Based inParis, France · CET / CEST
LanguagesFrançais · English · Italiano talks & interviews in any
Available forKeynotes, panels, podcast, advisory no paid endorsements
Directjb@kempf.pro
Kyberjb@kyber.tech Kyber-related
VLC · OSSjb@videolan.org VideoLAN & open source
Phone+33 6 72 70 47 34 Use with parsimony · Signal first
PGPF1A2 4C8B 9D17 E3F5 · 7B22 6E04 5A91 D8C3 2F46