AI company Hugging Face has acquired Pollen Robotics, a French startup making the humanoid robot Reachy 2. As part of the acquisition, Hugging Face will make both the hardware and software designs of Reachy 2 open source, in addition to continuing to sell the physical robot. The company’s leadership has indicated that this approach is intended to encourage widespread experimentation and faster technological progress in robotics, drawing parallels with how open-weight AI models have accelerated developments in machine learning.
Founded in 2016 by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet, Pollen Robotics had secured approximately €2.5 million in funding prior to the acquisition, with backing from investors including Bpifrance. Its flagship product, Reachy 2, is capable of performing routine physical tasks such as picking up fruit and arranging mugs, and is already being used by various organizations in research related to robotic manipulation. While the identities of these companies have not been disclosed, their use of Reachy 2 highlights the robot’s practical relevance to embodied AI research.
The acquisition also formalizes a prior partnership between Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics. The two had previously collaborated on “Le Robot,” an open-source platform for training robots on everyday tasks. Following the acquisition, Hugging Face has established a dedicated robotics team led by Remi Cadene, who previously worked as a robotics engineer on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot project.
