Jean-Baptiste Kempf

Jean-Baptiste Kempf is an engineer, entrepreneur, and open-source leader, known for creating the VideoLAN non-profit organization and driving the development of VLC media player, the iconic video player. He has been a key contributor to numerous open source projects, such as FFmpeg, x264, dav1d, VLC and a few others. He has also been the president of the VideoLAN foundation, since its foundation. He has created and led several startups in the multimedia and gaming space, around on open source solutions, like Videolabs, FFlabs, Klabs, Kyber or Playruo, and grew them to become profitable companies. Jean-Baptiste has been CTO of several major Tech companies and has managed engineering teams from 5 to over 300 engineers, including Shadow, Veepee and more recently Scaleway. As CTO of Scaleway, he leads the company’s efforts in building a high-performance, sovereign European cloud, offering a credible alternative to U.S. hyperscalers, an urgent mission as digital sovereignty becomes central to Europe’s strategic autonomy. His deep and strong expertise in the video and open source engineering field and in engineering organizations made him become a worldline lecturer, an advisor to startups and VC funds. The latest project is called Kyber, a fast-growing venture focused on real-time machine control for robotics, drones, and intelligent systems, especially in critical fields like healthcare and defense. His work continues to push the boundaries of ethical, scalable, and independent technology.