Hugging Face to sell open-source robots thanks to Pollen Robotics acquisition 🤖

Simon Alibert and Rémi Cadène from the LeRobot team with Reachy 1 — Photo: Léa Crespi

Since Hugging Face started the LeRobot library in 2024, led by ex-Tesla lead Remi Cadene, the Hugging Face Hub has quickly become the most widely used hub and software platform for open robotics with models, datasets, spaces and libraries.

Today, we’re excited to take it a step further by welcoming Pollen Robotics to Hugging Face, a team that's spent the last 9 years building open-source robots and hardware.

We believe robotics could be the next frontier unlocked by AI — and it should be open, affordable, and private. Our vision: a future where everyone in the community, from hobbyists to enterprises, can build or use robot assistants or games, starting from open solutions instead of closed, remote controlled, hardware.

— Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief scientist at Hugging Face

From the start, we built Pollen Robotics with open source at its core, driven by our belief that robots will play a profound role in our lives — serving as the interface between AI and the physical world. Hugging Face is a natural home for us to grow, as we share a common goal: putting AI and robotics in the hands of everyone.

— Matthieu Lapeyre, Pollen co-founder

This marks the fifth acquisition for Hugging Face, after notable additions like Gradio and XetHub.

According to Clem's 2025 prediction about robots, "at least 100k personal robots will be pre-ordered" this year, signaling massive growth in the space.

This month also celebrates one year since Hugging Face created LeRobot. The community of LeRobot-native DIY robot builders has flourished on YouTube and Discord, truly democratizing access to robotics technology. In just twelve months, the GitHub repository has grown from zero to over 12,000 stars, with dramatic growth continuing into 2025.

Hugging Face’s Robotics Venture Timeline

2024

2025