Hugging Face, a leader in artificial intelligence, has taken an important step forward by acquiring Pollen Robotics. This move signals a new chapter in their mission to bring AI and robotics closer together, with special attention to robots that can interact and work alongside people.
Who Is Pollen Robotics?
Pollen Robotics is a French company founded in 2016 by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet, former researchers at Inria’s Flowers team. They specialize in building open-source humanoid robots, with their main robot called Reachy 2. This robot stands out because it is designed to look and move like a human, making it an ideal tool for research, education, and real-world experiments with artificial intelligence.
Reachy 2 was created with the idea of openness and sharing. Its design and code are accessible to all, so anyone interested — from students to researchers to companies — can work with it, learn from it, and help improve it. Reachy 2 is especially known for its human-like arms, each with seven degrees of freedom, and a special joint system called the Orbita, which allows for smooth and flexible motions. This makes it perfect for tasks that need precise, delicate movements or for teaching robots to interact naturally with people.
Why Did Hugging Face Acquire Pollen Robotics?
Hugging Face has made a name for itself by building tools and platforms that help people use artificial intelligence. Now, they see robotics as the next big field for AI. Their goal is simple but ambitious: to make robotics more open, more affordable, and available to anyone who wants to be part of this exciting technology — not just big companies, but educators, researchers, and everyday inventors.
By joining forces with Pollen Robotics, Hugging Face is expanding its reach from software into the physical world. The plan is to make Reachy 2 widely available at a price of $70,000, while keeping its code open to encourage cooperation. Developers from around the world will be invited to contribute, unlocking new ideas and possibilities for how robots can be used in society.
The Meaning of the Acquisition
This is not Hugging Face’s first leap into new areas. They have previously added companies like Gradio and XetHub to their team, each expanding their toolkit in different ways. But bringing Pollen Robotics onboard is their boldest step yet into embodied AI — artificial intelligence that has a physical presence and can interact with the world instead of just processing information.
Within Hugging Face, projects like LeRobot, led by former Tesla scientist Remi Cadene, have already started exploring how open-source robots can change the way people build and use these machines. Now, with Pollen Robotics’ experience, the company is even better positioned to lead in this area.
Looking to the Future
This partnership could quickly speed up how we develop and use AI-powered robots. Having companies collaborate openly means new inventions can be shared more easily and improved by many hands. Robots like Reachy 2 could soon become central to education, helping students learn about robotics and AI. In research, they can enable experiments that were once impossible. And in everyday life, they could assist people in ways we are only beginning to imagine.
As artificial intelligence grows more advanced, combining it with robotics opens the door to machines that understand and help us better. With its welcoming, open-source approach, Hugging Face is inviting people everywhere to join this journey — to build, improve, and explore robotics together.
This acquisition is more than a business deal; it represents a commitment to making advanced robotic technology something everyone can access. By uniting the strengths of Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, the future of human-robot interaction is one step closer, guided by a shared belief in openness, collaboration, and real progress for all.
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