Hugging Face’s $399 walking robot duck has the kind of problem most hardware startups would love to have. Pollen Robotics, the Bordeaux robot maker Hugging Face acquired in April 2025, now tells shoppers on its Microduck store page that it “can’t promise Christmas delivery for new microduck orders anymore.” Orders placed now carry an estimated wait of four to six months, on a “first ordered, first shipped” basis.
The warning follows a very public bump. On October 21, NVIDIA chief executive Jensen Huang brought four Microducks onstage during his GTC Berlin keynote. A day later, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue posted on X that Microduck would “cross 20,000+ total pre-orders probably tomorrow,” and asked whether that makes it “probably the most sold robot of 2026?” Pollen hasn’t published an official order count, so treat that figure as the CEO’s claim rather than an audited number.
- Price: $399 before taxes and shipping, which Pollen calls an introductory price. The store lists €340 when you shop in euros, with bulk pricing from 10 units.
- Delivery: first deliveries were targeted before Christmas 2026. New orders are now estimated at four to six months, first ordered, first shipped.
- Status: pre-orders opened August 27, 2026. The control software and training tools are already public as open source.
- The catch: several specs aren’t final, the battery lasts about an hour, and only the software is open source. Pollen says the hardware is not.
What $399 buys: a 25 cm biped with 15 motors and a grabbing beak
Microduck is small. Pollen’s press kit puts it at 25 cm tall and 14 cm wide, weighing under 800 g (the store says 780 g). It has 15 motors, a Rockchip RK3566 processor with an AI accelerator, 1 GB of RAM and 32 GB of storage. For sensing it gets a front camera with a recording indicator light, two IMUs and an 8×8 time-of-flight depth sensor that Pollen calls a LiDAR. There are microphones, a speaker with a voice generated for each individual robot, two NFC antennas, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
The head ends in an articulated beak that can pick things up. Power comes from a removable 2,600 mAh NP-F550 battery, the camera-battery format many video lights use, and Pollen says it runs for about an hour. A game controller comes in the box. Out of the box the robot has seven trained moves, and its control policy runs on the robot at 50 Hz. It comes in four colorways: Cream, Graphite, Lavender and Sky.
Pollen is upfront that the spec sheet can still change. The press kit lists the camera, the depth sensor’s range, the radio, the SDK languages and the age recommendation as “not final yet.”
What Pollen says Microduck can do
In its August 27 launch post, signed by a team that includes Pollen’s Matthieu Lapeyre and Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf, Pollen says Microduck can walk, sit, crouch, get back up from many common falls and even roller-skate. You can drive it with the gamepad, have it follow a laser dot or trigger its moves directly. To pick something up, the whole body lowers, the beak closes and the object comes along.
Pollen pitches it as a robot that works straight away rather than a kit that “only becomes interesting after a weekend of setup,” with room to go deeper. Its movements are trained in simulation with reinforcement learning and then moved to the real robot, and the robot software and training tools are already on GitHub. Pollen’s developer blog has kept going since launch, with posts this week on mapping a room with the 8×8 depth sensor and on odometry.
The Jensen Huang bump
NVIDIA used Microduck to show off its agent-driven robot training pipeline in Berlin. According to NVIDIA’s keynote recap, Huang showed an AI agent that set up a training course, simulated the robot in Isaac Sim, sent training jobs to the cloud and brought the resulting policy back to an RTX Spark machine for evaluation before deploying it. Then four Microducks came onstage, sitting, standing and napping on cue.
“You were created on RTX Spark,” Huang told the robots, adding that they had been trained in the cloud “on a whole bunch of NVIDIA supercomputers, and you learned your skills right here on RTX Spark and the digital twin.” The same keynote produced NVIDIA’s new reference humanoid, which we covered in a separate story.
Delangue credited the appearance directly, calling the order surge “the @JensenHuang keynote effect” on pre-orders. His post included a screenshot of store analytics, but it doesn’t say what period it covers, so we aren’t repeating its numbers here. What’s verifiable is the store banner: Pollen stopped promising Christmas delivery for new orders and says it is “ramping up production.”
Open source, with an asterisk
Hugging Face’s brand is open source, and Microduck’s launch post carries an “Open source” label. The press kit is more careful. It says “open source” refers to the software, and asks writers not to describe Microduck as open-source hardware. If you were hoping to print your own duck from published CAD files, that isn’t what’s on offer.
What is on offer is a cheap, real robot from a team that has shipped before. Pollen says more than 10,000 of its Reachy Mini desktop robots have reached buyers since that launch, and Microduck is its second consumer robot. The store lists a €33 accessory pack, a €33 charger pack and a €99.99 developer pack, and says Microduck ships at launch to the U.S., Canada, the EU, the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, Japan and South Korea.
What to watch before your duck arrives
Three things. First, whether Pollen backs Delangue’s 20,000 figure with its own count, since a number that size would make a four-to-six-month wait plausible for a small team. Second, the final spec sheet, especially the camera, radio and age recommendation still marked as not final. Third, whether the earliest buyers still get their robots before Christmas, as Pollen originally targeted. If you order today, plan on a 2027 delivery.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Microduck cost?
Pollen Robotics lists Microduck at $399 before taxes and shipping and calls it an introductory price. The store shows €340 when you shop in euros, and offers bulk pricing for orders of 10 or more.
When will a Microduck ordered now ship?
Pollen’s store estimates four to six months for new orders and says it can no longer promise Christmas delivery for them. Orders ship in the order they were placed.
What can the Microduck robot do?
Pollen says it can walk, sit, crouch, get up from many common falls, roller-skate, follow a laser dot and pick up small objects with its beak. It ships with a game controller and seven trained moves.
Is Microduck open source?
Only the software. Pollen’s press kit says “open source” refers to the robot software and asks writers not to call Microduck open-source hardware.
How long does the Microduck battery last?
About an hour, according to Pollen. It uses a removable 2,600 mAh NP-F550 battery, so you can swap in a spare.
Sources
- Pollen Robotics, Microduck store page (price in euros, delivery banner, shipping countries, accessory packs): store.pollen-robotics.com
- Pollen Robotics, Microduck press kit (price, specs, items marked not final, open-source wording, company background): pollen-robotics.com/microduck/press-kit
- Pollen Robotics, “Meet Microduck,” August 27, 2026 (capabilities, $399 introductory price, Christmas target, Reachy Mini figure): pollen-robotics.com
- NVIDIA, GTC Berlin 2026 keynote recap (training pipeline demo, Microduck onstage, Huang quote): blogs.nvidia.com
- Clem Delangue on X, October 22, 2026 (pre-order claim): x.com/ClementDelangue
- Pollen Robotics on YouTube, “Meet Microduck, the $399 Tiny Robot You Can Teach New Tricks”: youtube.com
Pollen Robotics and NVIDIA pages accessed October 23, 2026, at about 10:30 AM ET.
Related: More Other Robots coverage · Robot companies directory
Last updated: October 23, 2026. This is not buying advice. To report an error, see our corrections page. Articles are drafted with AI assistance and reviewed and edited by an editor; see our editorial policy.
