Hugging Face robot ducks sell 20,000 units after viral demo

Preorders for a small, waddling robot duck hit 20,000 units within 24 hours of a viral video from GTC Berlin. The surge followed a keynote presentation by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who interacted with a flock of Microducks on stage. The clip showed the robots stomping, making beeping sounds, and performing summersaults on voice command. Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue confirmed the sales figure in a tweet.

The devices are manufactured by Pollen Robotics, a company acquired by Hugging Face in 2025. Nvidia purchased Hugging Face in September, making the duck an asset of the GPU giant. The Microduck is the second robot from the company, following the Reachy Mini. Both devices use an open source design that allows owners to modify and share new behaviors with the community.

The robots were trained using Nvidia's technology stack. Simulations taught the devices basic commands such as sitting, standing, and walking, which are preloaded into the hardware. Pollen Robotics stated that users can teach their specific units new tricks and upload those movements to a shared database. This modularity distinguishes the Microduck from standard consumer toys that have fixed feature sets.

Delangue said the Microducks are expected to reach customers in time for the Christmas season. He suggested the device could become the best-selling robot of the year, noting that promotional material targets adults as well as children. The video of Huang playing with the robots showed them falling over for a simulated nap, a feature that contributed to the online buzz.

The sales spike occurred shortly after a week dominated by reports of cyberattacks linked to AI systems. The Microduck demo offered a lighter counterpoint to the industry news cycle. The company has not announced specific production numbers or pricing for the holiday batch, but the preorder count indicates strong initial demand.