Hugging Face Acquires Pollen Robotics to Bring Open-Source AI into the Physical World

Favorite AI model hub Hugging Face acquires a favorite open source humanoid robot company Pollen Robotics. With this news, Embodied AI has for the first time a credible open source starting point in competition with closed source companies from China and USA.

Hugging Face, the collaborative AI platform known for democratizing access to machine learning models, has acquired French robotics startup Pollen Robotics, creators of the open-source humanoid robot Reachy 2. The move signals a bold step into the world of embodied AI — bringing the power of open-source intelligence into the real, tangible world.

Pollen Robotics has earned attention for its modular, open-source robot designed to be easily customized and improved by developers. By welcoming the team and technology behind Reachy 2, Hugging Face is not only expanding its ecosystem beyond code and datasets but is also staying true to its mission of making cutting-edge AI accessible and collaborative — even in physical form.

This acquisition could mark the beginning of a new era where Hugging Face becomes a hub not just for digital AI innovation, but also for robotics research, prototyping, and education. By merging software with hardware, the company is making a strong case for open-source AI as a foundation for the future of human–robot interaction.