Hug Face on Thursday unveiled MicroDuck, a cute little duck-like robot. It will cost $399 and ship before Christmas.
Clem DeLang, CEO of Hugging Face, said MicroDuck is an “open source robot that can be taught new tricks using reinforcement learning.” The 25-centimeter-tall duck can waddle, pick up objects with its beak (up to 800 grams), get back up after falling, crouch, and even roller skate.
“Welcome to the era of open source, affordable robots that democratize physical AI and world models!” DeLang said.
Hugging Face is best known as a platform and community for developers to find open model weights. However, the company acquired French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025 to build affordable open source AI hardware. A few months later, the duo released Reachy Mini, a small desktop robot. We currently sell the $499 Reachy Mini with a Raspberry Pi computer and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite with a Mac or PC.
The new Microduck sees the world with a camera, lidar sensors, and two IMUs (inertial measurement units that measure and report the movement of objects).
Pollen Robotics noted that Microduck’s behavior could be trained in simulation and deployed directly to the robot. Developers can then fine-tune, retrain, and redeploy the bot. The SDK (software development kit), simulations, and complete RL training stack are available on GitHub.
For those concerned about having a camera-equipped robot in their bedroom or private space, DeLang previously told TechCrunch that bots operating in an open source model are far better from a privacy perspective than “black box systems” managed by a small number of organizations. “Especially when the CEOs of these organizations aren’t the most stable people in the world.”
While open source provides auditability and control for developers, there is no guarantee that sensitive data will remain private even after consumers begin installing software applications on the model. These apps can access your bot’s camera and microphone and, depending on how they’re built, send that data to external services.
Microduck’s launch comes amid reports that Hugging Face is set to be acquired by Nvidia at a valuation of $13 billion. Nvidia and Hugging Face have been partners for years, with Nvidia providing the startup’s infrastructure since at least 2023. The two companies also collaborate publicly on advancing open source AI.
Hugging Face recently made headlines for a cybersecurity incident that occurred after OpenAI’s systems entered its sandbox during a safety test and hacked into the platform’s servers.
TechCrunch has reached out to Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics for more information.
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