Microduck: $399 open-source robot duck tops $2.5M in 24 hours
Pollen Robotics, together with HuggingFace, launched Microduck, a small open-source bipedal robot duck priced at $399. Sales exceeded $2.5 million within 24 hours of launch, making it one of the most successful robot product launches ever. Its core appeal lies in affordable open-source hardware plus a sim-to-real reinforcement learning training pipeline; shipping is now backlogged for months.
Confirmed
- The product is a joint release from Pollen Robotics and HuggingFace, standing about 25 cm tall, weighing roughly 800 grams, and priced at $399.
- The hardware features 15 actuators plus sensors and connectivity including camera, speaker, LiDAR, NFC, Bluetooth, and WiFi.
- Skills can be trained via reinforcement learning in simulation and then deployed to the physical hardware, working out of the box.
- Sales performance: per @emmanuelvivier, sales topped $1 million within 7 hours; per @akhaliq, over $2.5 million in 24 hours; Chuangyebang reported sales exceeding $2.6 million in 24 hours (over 5,000 units, peaking at one sale every 4 seconds).
- Chuangyebang reported shipping is scheduled 4-6 months out, with delivery expected before Christmas.
- A developer has already built a derivative version named Microdino using the same specifications.
Unconfirmed
- Posts vary slightly on the sales figures ($2.5M vs $2.6M); the exact number awaits official disclosure.
- @ZeYanjie claimed the product was released by Unitree, contradicting other posts pointing to Pollen Robotics and HuggingFace; unverified, and the majority of sources were followed.
Why it matters
- The $399 price point and open-source design dramatically lower the barrier to bipedal robotics research, letting a broader developer community replicate and iterate on sim-based reinforcement learning.
- Millions of dollars in first-day sales show genuine and strong market demand for affordable open-source robots, potentially prompting more vendors to follow a similar strategy.
2026-08-30 ~ 2026-08-31 · 5 related posts
- Episode 1: Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics Launch $399 Open-Source Bipedal Robot Microduck(2026-08-27, 65 posts)
- Episode 2: Hugging Face Unveils $399 Bipedal Robot Microduck(2026-08-28, 3 posts)
- Episode 3: Microduck: $399 open-source robot duck tops $2.5M in 24 hours(2026-08-30, 5 posts)
Primary sources
- Bipedal Robot Microduck Priced at $399 with Sim-to-Real Training — burny_tech · 2026-08-30
- HuggingFace and Pollen Robotics launch $399 Microduck robot, $1M sales in 7 hours — emmanuelvivier · 2026-08-30
- Unitree Unveils Microduck: Open Source Bipedal Robot for Under $400 — ZeYanjie · 2026-08-31
- Microducks robot sells over $2.5M in first 24 hours — _akhaliq · 2026-08-31
1 near-duplicate retellings: 创业邦