French open source robotics startup founded in 2016 in Bordeaux by former Inria researchers. Created the Reachy humanoid robot platform used at Cornell and Carnegie Mellon. Acquired by Hugging Face in April 2025, becoming the reference hardware for the LeRobot AI framework.
Pollen Robotics is a French robotics company developing open-source humanoid robots for research, education, and embodied AI. Founded in 2016 in Bordeaux by former Inria researchers behind the Poppy robot project, the company has focused on creating accessible humanoid platforms that accelerate robotics research through open hardware and software. Its flagship robot, Reachy, has become one of the world’s most widely adopted open-source humanoid platforms, supporting researchers and developers across more than 20 countries. In 2025, Pollen Robotics was acquired by Hugging Face, bringing Reachy into a broader open-source AI ecosystem with the goal of making both its hardware and software openly available to the global robotics community.
Platform maturity, autonomy stack, and flagship-system specifications in one view.
A concise view of platform maturity and deployment footprint.
Published operating specifications for the lead system.
In April 2025, Hugging Face acquired Pollen Robotics. The ~20 Pollen employees joined Hugging Face, and Reachy 2 became available through Hugging Face — the first time a major AI platform offered physical robot hardware alongside AI models.
NVIDIA to Acquire Hugging Face for $12.93B
NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for $12.93 billion, bringing one of the largest open AI development platforms under the world’s dominant AI chipmaker.
Robotico
NVIDIA’s Reported Hugging Face Deal Could Reshape the Robotics AI Race
NVIDIA is reportedly closing in on a roughly $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face, a move that could have major implications for open-source AI, robotics, and the development of Physical AI.
Draken Tobio
Pollen Robotics Opens Pre-Orders for $399 Microduck
Pollen Robotics has opened pre-orders for Microduck, a 25cm bipedal robot designed as an accessible platform for reinforcement learning and sim-to-real robotics development.
Robotico
Microduck: A Tiny Robot Built to Learn How to Move
Microduck is a compact 25 cm bipedal robot from Pollen Robotics designed to make physical AI and robotics more accessible. With 15 motors, sensors, an articulated beak, and open-source reinforcement learning tools, it can walk, recover from falls, pick up objects, and even roller-skate. Priced at $399, Microduck brings real-world robotics experimentation from the lab to the desk.
klayPollen Robotics was founded in 2016 in Bordeaux by Matthieu Lapeyre, Pierre Rouanet, and Alice Coucke from Inria's Flowers team. They had previously created Poppy, one of the first 3D-printed open-source humanoid robots.
Reachy launched at CES 2020 and gained traction globally, with ~100 robots operating in 20 countries. Pollen won second place in the ANA Avatar XPRIZE, claiming $2 million in prize money.
The company operated capital-light for seven years, securing a seed round of 2.4 million euros in April 2023. The next-generation Reachy 2 represented a significant upgrade in capability.
In April 2025, Hugging Face acquired Pollen Robotics. The ~20 Pollen employees joined Hugging Face, and Reachy 2 became available through Hugging Face, the first time a major AI platform offered physical robot hardware alongside AI models.
Pollen Robotics is a Bordeaux-based French robotics company that created Reachy, one of the most widely adopted open-source humanoid robots in research, used across 20 countries. Founded in 2016 by former Inria researchers who created the Poppy robot. In April 2025, Pollen was acquired by Hugging Face, which plans to open-source both hardware and software.
