Hugging Face launches humanoid robots for $300

The Hugging Face platform has presented HopeJR and Reachy Mini, two new open-source humanoid robots designed to making robotics accessible to developers, researchers, and educational centers. The announcement was made in May 2025, following the recent acquisition of Pollen Robotics, and represents a clear commitment to integrating AI and physical interaction. HopeJR costs about $3,000 and can walk and manipulate objects; Reachy Mini, by $250, listen, speak, and nod from a desk. The company is looking for democratize access to advanced robotics in the same way that it has done with language models.

Robotics is no longer just for billionaires

HopeJR is positioned as the most accessible humanoid robot on the market. Its price of just $3,000 puts it below any equivalent commercial offering, which typically costs over $100,000. Thanks to 3D-printed parts, dexterous hands, and a modular structure, the robot is fully buildable and hackable, allowing any developer to experiment with AI in the physical world.

This approach allows that small universities, makers and independent laboratories have access to tools previously reserved for tech giants. The strategy is reminiscent of the spirit of Arduino or Raspberry Pi, but applied to robots capable of locomotion and complex manipulationThis is the first time a customizable, humanoid, bipedal robot has entered this price range, promising a new wave of decentralized innovation.

Reachy Mini: AI in the palm of your hand

Reachy Mini lowers the barrier to entry even further. Priced between $250 and $300, this is a desktop unit capable of speaking, listening, and moving its head. Ideal for prototyping conversational interfaces, embedded care systems, or basic physical assistants, it's a compact yet powerful platform for physical AI.

Derived from the $2 Reachy 70,000 model, the Mini retains some of its expressiveness, but on a more restrained and affordable scale. Hugging Face has confirmed that both robots will be available by the end of 2025, and a waiting list for interested parties has already been opened. With this, The company expands its reach from software to hardware, without renouncing its principles of openness and collaboration.

Pollen Robotics' legacy in Hugging Face's new DNA

Buying Pollen Robotics in April 2025 This was the turning point that consolidated Hugging Face's commitment to hardware. In addition to the Reachy robot and its technical team—around 30 employees—the French startup contributed a vision aligned with the community spirit: Accessible, ethical, and customizable robotics.

This acquisition was not just strategic, it was cultural. Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet, founders of Pollen, joined the management team, ensuring that the evolution of the product line respected the maker philosophy. The integration allowed for the development of a stepped line: from Reachy Mini for personal or classroom environments, to HopeJR for advanced research, all within a single ecosystem based on open AI.

Robotics for everyone, not just Silicon Valley

The most disruptive thing about the announcement is not the technology, but the political and cultural intention behind the hardware. Hugging Face has been championing open, explainable, and open-ended AI for years. Now it's applying those same principles to the physical bodies of robots.AI only makes sense if it can interact with the world, and that interaction should not be restricted to large corporations.", declared Thomas Wolf, co-founder of the company.

This vision contrasts with the closed developments of companies like Tesla or Boston Dynamics, whose robots, although impressive, are inaccessible both in code and price. HopeJR and Reachy Mini do not seek to compete directly with them, but clear the playing field so that students, artists and small teams can also design, program and improve their own automata.

If you can touch it, you can change it.

The open robotics proposed by Hugging Face is not an anecdote: It is a radical redefinition of what we understand by artificial intelligence. The leap from virtual models to manipulable bodies represents a convergence of bits and atoms that redefines how we interact with AI. For the first time, the same environment that allows you to train a language model offers you a physical body with which that model can act, gesture, listen, and respond.

This doesn't just change teaching or prototyping: opens the door to new disciplines, new arts, new pedagogiesAnd it does so from an inclusive perspective. As was the case with personal computers and 3D printers, these robots mark the beginning of a new literacy. Not of text, but of movement. One in which, if you can imagine it, you can build it. And if you can build it, you can teach it to speak.