Hugging Face Expands into Robotics Hardware

Hugging Face has acquired the French startup Pollen Robotics, marking its entry into hardware with the open-source humanoid robot Reachy 2. The acquisition aims to blend Hugging Face's open-source AI expertise with Pollen's robotics capabilities, leveraging predictions that personal robots will see substantial growth by 2025. This move is a strategic expansion of Hugging Face's robotics initiatives, which began with the recruitment of Tesla alum Remi Cadene to lead new projects. Reachy 2, which is fully open-source, can be teleoperated with VR and comes in multiple models, though it is still considered a proof of concept compared to commercial humanoid robots. The acquisition also adds about 30 Pollen employees to Hugging Face, which has raised significant funding from major tech companies. Hugging Face plans to maintain its open-source ethos, making the robot's code available for public modification and improvement.