Hugging Face has announced the acquisition of French robotics company Pollen Robotics, best known for its open-source humanoid robot Reachy. This move signals Hugging Face’s expansion into the robotics space by integrating open-source AI with physical embodiments.

According to Hugging Face, the newly formed team will focus on building open-source robotic tools and infrastructure, starting with a new organization called 'huggingrobots'. Their initial mission is to make open-source robotics more accessible and aligned with the open principles of AI development.

Pollen Robotics has long championed transparency in hardware and software, and their collaboration with Hugging Face is expected to accelerate real-world AI experimentation using embodied agents. This acquisition comes amid growing interest in the intersection of large language models and robotics, with the potential to power assistants that can learn and interact with their physical environment.