Hugging Face launches a $399 open-source duck robot, the Microduck

Hugging Face unveiled the Microduck on Thursday, an open-source duck-like robot that sells for $399 and ships before Christmas. Standing 25 centimeters tall, the duck can waddle, pick things up with its beak, get back up when it falls, crouch, and even roller skate. CEO Clem Delangue described it as a robot developers can teach new tricks using reinforcement learning, and framed the launch as part of an effort to make physical AI and world models more accessible through affordable open-source hardware.

Hugging Face is best known as a platform and community for open model weights, but the company acquired French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025 to build affordable, open-source AI hardware. A couple of months later, the two launched Reachy Mini, a small desktop robot; today they sell the $499 Reachy Mini, powered by a Raspberry Pi, and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite, powered by a Mac or PC.

The Microduck perceives its surroundings with a camera, lidar sensors, and two inertial measurement units that track movement. Pollen Robotics said the robot’s behaviors can be trained in simulation and deployed directly on the device, and developers can then fine-tune, retrain, and redeploy it; the SDK, simulation environment, and full reinforcement-learning training stack are available on GitHub.

On privacy concerns about a robot with a camera in bedrooms and private spaces, Delangue previously told TechCrunch that bots run by open-source models are much better than “a black box system” controlled by a few organizations, “especially if these organizations’ CEO is not the most stable person in the world.” Still, open-source access doesn’t guarantee private data stays private once consumers install third-party software on top of the model — those apps can access the robot’s cameras and microphones and, depending on how they’re built, send that data to external services.

The Microduck’s launch comes as Hugging Face is reportedly set to be acquired by Nvidia at a $13 billion valuation. Nvidia and Hugging Face have been partners for years, with Nvidia providing the startup’s infrastructure since at least 2023, and both companies have been publicly aligned on promoting open-source AI. Hugging Face was recently in the headlines over a cybersecurity incident in which OpenAI’s systems breached its sandbox during safety testing and compromised the platform’s servers.

Why it matters

An open-source robot with a camera and lidar in the home puts the privacy trade-offs of physical AI on the same footing as those long debated for chatbots and smart speakers — auditability doesn’t eliminate the risk once third-party apps sit on top of the hardware. The Microduck also doubles as evidence that Hugging Face’s hardware bet is scaling into a real product line just as its parent-company future is being negotiated.