AI dev platform Hugging Face has acquired Pollen Robotics, a robotics startup based in France, for an undisclosed amount. Wired reports that Hugging Face plans to sell Pollen’s humanoid robot, Reachy 2, and let developers download and suggest improvements to its code.
Pollen Robotics, which aims to bring affordable humanoid robots to the home, was founded in 2016 by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet. The company managed to raise €2.5 million (around $2.83 million) from investors, including Bpifrance, prior to its exit, according to Crunchbase.
If you’ve followed the progress of robotics in the past 18 months, you’ve likely noticed how robotics is increasingly becoming the next frontier that AI will unlock.
At Hugging Face—in robotics and across all AI fields—we believe in a future where AI and robots are open-source,…
— Thomas Wolf (@Thom_Wolf) April 14, 2025
The acquisition marks an expansion of Hugging Faces’ robotics efforts, with which Pollen was closely involved. Last year, Hugging Face teamed up with Pollen to build “Le Robot,” an open source robot trained to do a variety of household chores. Hugging Face also established a robotics team led by Remi Cadene, a former robotics engineer from Tesla’s Optimus program.