Jean-Baptiste Kempf

He was born in Paris in 1983 and later studied engineering at École Centrale Paris, where he joined and eventually led the VLC project.⁠[1]

VideoLAN began as a project of the École Centrale Paris student association Via Centrale Réseaux; on February 1, 2001, the school allowed all its software to be open-sourced under the GNU GPL, including VideoLAN Client, later renamed VLC media player.⁠[2]

From 2003 to 2009 he was a member, and at one point president, of the student association VIA Centrale Réseaux; he joined VLC as a Centrale student in 2005, took over its development in 2007, and has led it since.⁠[3]

In 2008 he created the VideoLAN non-profit and has run it for almost twenty years, still shipping releases; he has also contributed to projects including FFmpeg, x264 and dav1d.⁠[1]

In December 2011 he announced on behalf of VideoLAN that the VLC engine, libVLC and libVLCcore, was moving from GPLv2 or later to LGPLv2.1 or later to match the evolution of the video industry, while VLC media player itself stayed under GPLv2 or later.⁠[4]

His resume says he led projects including ports of VLC to mobile platforms and the LGPL relicensing of libVLC.⁠[5]

In 2012 he founded his first company, Videolabs, whose custom multimedia engineering, porting and licensing revenue pays core developers to work on open source, to make VLC sustainable.⁠[3]

In December 2012 a Kickstarter campaign run by VLC core developers ended with £47,056 pledged by 3,080 backers to port VLC to Windows 8, Windows RT and Windows Phone 8; he was one of the press contacts.⁠[6]

In March 2017 WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 documents described a tool allegedly developed by the CIA that ran inside a modified VLC Portable 2.1.5; VideoLAN said it was not a remotely exploitable vulnerability, required physical access to the target computer, and would be blocked from version 2.2.5.⁠[7]

In November 2018 he and Gaël Musquet were named Knights (Chevaliers) of France’s Ordre national du Mérite.⁠[8]

In December 2018 he announced dav1d 0.1.0, “Gazelle,” the first usable version of the AV1 decoder developed by the VideoLAN, VLC and FFmpeg communities and sponsored by the Alliance for Open Media, aiming to be the reference optimized decoder for AV1.⁠[9]

In September 2020 the cloud gaming platform Shadow announced that he was joining as chief technology officer; by then he had been president of VideoLAN for 14 years.⁠[10]

In January 2025 VideoLAN showed at CES a VLC feature that generates and translates AI subtitles locally, offline and in real time, and celebrated passing 6 billion downloads; he said VLC’s active users were still growing even in the age of streaming services.⁠[11]

In 2025 he spoke at the AI-Pulse conference as chief technology officer of the European cloud provider Scaleway, responsible for its technical strategy and innovation across cloud services.⁠[12]

In November 2025 the FSFE and LUGBZ presented him with the European SFS Award 2025 at SFSCON for his lasting contributions to the Free Software movement and long-term dedication to VLC, noting that he had turned down big money, advertising and corporate buyouts.⁠[13]

In February 2026 he recounted on television that GoogleGoogleGoogle is an American technology company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin and incorporated in 1998. It became an Alphabet subsidiary in 2015. Its businesses include internet search, advertising, software platforms, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence.Open the full entry had offered VideoLAN $1 for every Chrome installation made through the VLC installer, which he declined; in 2016 he had said, “We hate bundling and offers, and we will always reject those.”⁠[14]

He appeared with longtime FFmpeg contributor Kieran KunhyaKieran KunhyaKieran Kunhya is a video software engineer, founder and CEO of the London broadcast contribution company Open Broadcast Systems, a longtime contributor to the open-source multimedia framework FFmpeg and the person behind FFmpeg’s account on X.Open the full entry on episode 496 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, discussing how video playback works, codecs, FFmpeg’s history, turning down advertising money, handwritten assembly, open-source burnout and VLC backdoors, among other topics.⁠[15]

In May 2026 he said in an interview that the team had refused offers in the “huit chiffres” (eight-figure) range, and that VLC remains free, without advertising or data collection, and lives mainly on user donations.⁠[16]

In June 2026 Kyber, the French deep-tech company he founded, raised $5 million (about €4.3 million) led by Lightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture PartnersLightspeed Venture Partners backs companies from seed through late-stage financing. Its website distinguishes Lightspeed Management Company (LSVP) from Lightspeed India Partners (LSIP): the two are separately operated investment advisers, with the U.S., European, and Israeli offices belonging to LSVP and the India and Southeast Asia offices belonging to LSIP.Open the full entry with OVNI Capital and Kima Ventures, to support the commercial rollout of its open-source real-time infrastructure for the physical AI era.⁠[17]

As of October 2026 his resume described him as a 43-year-old French engineer who had been CTO or VP of engineering at companies including Shadow, Vente-Privée and Scaleway and was now focusing on Kyber, built to control machines, drones and robots in real time.⁠[5]

Personal website: Public link: https://jbkempf.com/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/jbkempf (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbkempf/ (opens in a new window)⁠[15]

VideoLAN: Official website: https://www.videolan.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[1]

Kyber: Official website: https://kyber.tech (opens in a new window)⁠[1]