Hugging Face unveiled Microduck, a 25-centimeter duck-shaped robot that sells for $399 and ships before Christmas. It can waddle, pick up objects up to 800 grams with its beak, get back up after falling, crouch, and roller skate. Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue called it an “open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning,” and tied the launch to the goal of democratizing physical AI and world models.

Microduck builds on Hugging Face‘s acquisition of French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025. That deal also produced the desktop Reachy Mini line, which now includes the $499 Raspberry Pi-powered Reachy Mini and the $399 Reachy Mini Lite, powered by a Mac or PC. The duck perceives its surroundings with a camera, lidar sensors, and two IMUs. Pollen Robotics says behaviors can be trained in simulation and deployed directly to the robot, after which developers can fine-tune, re-train, and re-deploy it. The SDK, simulation environment, and full reinforcement learning training stack are available on GitHub.

Hugging Face argues that open-source robots are better for privacy than a “black box system” controlled by a handful of organizations, especially when company leadership is unstable. TechCrunch notes that open source gives developers auditability and control but does not guarantee that sensitive data remains private after consumers add applications on top of the model; those apps can access the bot’s cameras and microphones and may send data to external services.

The product launches as Hugging Face is reportedly set to be acquired by Nvidia at a $13 billion valuation. Nvidia has supplied Hugging Face‘s infrastructure since at least 2023, and the two companies have publicly promoted open-source AI. Hugging Face also recently dealt with a cybersecurity incident stemming from OpenAI’s systems breaching its sandbox during safety testing and hacking into the platform’s servers. TechCrunch reached out to Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics for more information.