Microduck, an open-source robot launched by Pollen Robotics under Hugging Face, priced at $399, sold over 10,000 units within days of its release, generating more than $5 million in sales.Article author and source: Wall Street Journal
An open-source robot shaped like a duck, priced at $399, sold over ten thousand units within days of its launch, causing its Chinese chip supplier, Rockchip, to experience consecutive gains on the A-share market.
According to a recent CNBC report, Pollen Robotics, a French subsidiary of Hugging Face, has sold over 10,000 units of its Microduck robot since its launch last Thursday, with sales surpassing $5 million by Tuesday evening. Strong order demand has pushed delivery times for new orders to after Christmas 2026.
Driven by the popular demand for Microduck, Rockchip, the Shanghai-listed company that provides the core computing chips for Microduck, saw its stock price rise consecutively on Monday and Tuesday, drawing market attention. Over the past five days, the stock accumulated a gain of approximately 15%, though it experienced a slight pullback today.
A duck-shaped device that has sparked interest in a Chinese chip: Microduck, priced at $399 per unit, weighs approximately 800 grams, stands about 25 centimeters tall, and is equipped with sensors including a camera, microphone, speaker, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and LiDAR.
Its core computing unit is based on Rockchip's RK3566 chip. Pollen Robotics stated that they chose Rockchip due to its "onboard 1 TOPS NPU"—a neural network processing unit capable of one trillion operations per second.
Lian Jye Su, Chief Analyst at market research firm Omdia, positions Rockchip as a "key supplier" in edge AI, noting that its chips are widely used in machine vision applications involving object detection and image recognition.
However, Lian Jye Su also pointed out limitations: “Although Rockchip chips have extensive coverage, they are not designed for complex edge AI devices due to insufficient computational resources.”
The RK3566 chip also incorporates licensed technology from the UK semiconductor company ARM.
Microduck: Open-source and trainable—not just a "toy duck." Microduck's biggest selling point isn't its ability to roller-skate or grab socks, but that users can teach it themselves.
Wall Street Journal previously mentioned that Microduck supports reinforcement learning—robots learn new physical skills through trial and error, rather than relying on pre-programmed instructions by engineers. Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue called it "the first affordable AI robot that can be taught new skills via reinforcement learning."
He also said the team deliberately designed Microduck to be “born for movement and ready to fall,” emphasizing: “We also hope these robots teach people that robots can fail and make mistakes, and that you need to account for this in your design.”
Microduck has no traditional arms; instead, it uses a movable "duck bill" to grasp objects, capable of picking up items weighing up to approximately 800 grams, and can right itself after being knocked over.
Orders are surging, and delivery is under strain. Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face, posted on social media that users have begun monitoring Microduck’s supply chain as the company faces a strong influx of orders.
After Microduck opened for pre-orders, sales reached one unit every four seconds. Hugging Face aimed to sell over 20,000 units, with initial products scheduled for delivery before Christmas, but delivery times for new orders have now been delayed.
Microduck is manufactured in China with participation from Shenzhen-based open-source hardware manufacturer Seeed Studio.
Hugging Face doubles down on physical AI as rumors of NVIDIA's acquisition remain unresolved. Microduck is Hugging Face's second robot. Previously, Hugging Face partnered with Pollen Robotics to launch the Reachy Mini, which sold over 10,000 units in its initial run; Hugging Face later acquired Pollen Robotics.
Just before Microduck's release, The Information reported that NVIDIA has agreed to acquire Hugging Face for approximately $12.9 billion. Neither company has commented on the matter.
Meanwhile, similar products are emerging in the market: startup Zeroth has launched a child-sized humanoid robot priced at 8,888 yuan; Mondo Robotics’ Wall-E-style camera robot has surpassed its Kickstarter funding goal by 80 times, with early bird pricing starting at $549.