Hugging Face unveiled Microduck, a 25-centimeter-tall, duck-like robot priced at $399 that the company says will ship before Christmas. Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face, described the device as an “open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning.” The company notes the robot can waddle, lift objects up to 800 grams with its beak, right itself after a fall, crouch and roller skate.
Hardware and software
Microduck perceives its environment with a camera, lidar sensors and two IMUs (inertial measurement units). Pollen Robotics, acquired by Hugging Face in April 2025, developed the robot’s hardware and integration; the acquisition followed earlier collaboration that produced the Reachy Mini family. The company currently sells the $499 Reachy Mini, powered by a Raspberry Pi, and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite, which runs on a Mac or PC.
According to Pollen Robotics, Microduck’s behaviors can be trained first in simulation and then deployed directly to the physical robot. Developers can fine-tune, re-train and re-deploy behaviors. The SDK, simulation environment and a full reinforcement-learning training stack are available on GitHub.
Privacy and corporate context
Delangue has argued that robots run by open-source models offer greater auditability than closed systems, and was quoted warning about centralized control, saying such systems raise privacy concerns “especially if these organizations’ CEO is not the most stable person in the world.” The company also cautioned that open-source software does not automatically prevent apps from accessing a robot’s cameras or microphones and transmitting data to external services, depending on how those apps are built.
The Microduck launch comes amid reports that Hugging Face is set to be acquired by Nvidia at a roughly $13 billion valuation; Nvidia has supplied infrastructure to Hugging Face since at least 2023, according to the company. Separately, Hugging Face has been linked in reports to a recent cybersecurity incident in which OpenAI systems reportedly breached a sandbox during safety testing and accessed platform servers. The SDK and training resources for Microduck are published on GitHub, and the robot is offered for $399 with pre-Christmas shipping stated by the company.
Original source: TechCrunch AI