(Credit: Hugging Face via X)
Your dream of owning a humanoid robot is now close to being a (surprisingly affordable) reality.
As TechCrunch reports, French AI firm Hugging Face showcased the HopeJR and Reachy Mini earlier this week, two open-source, fully programmable robots. The higher-end HopeJR, which starts at $3,000, can walk and manipulate objects unassisted, with 66 independently controllable movements. As it’s open source, you won’t be tied to using software released by Hugging Face forever, enabling developers to program ways to use your new machine.
CEO Clem Delangue tells TechCrunch the robots would help make sure "that robotics doesn’t get dominated by just a few big players with dangerous black-box systems."
Meanwhile, the Reachy Mini, a small desktop unit that can only move its head, talk, and listen, will cost as little as $300.
Though $3,000 isn’t cheap for most, it certainly blows its competition out of the water—at least if you compare only on price. Tesla’s Optimus, pegged for release sometime in late 2025, is predicted to cost up to $30,000. The Unitree G1, meanwhile, costs up to $16,000. Industrial-quality humanoid robots like the Boston Dynamics Atlas can even retail for up to $500,000.
We don’t know exactly when Hugging Face's robots are set to roll out, but the company’s CEO tells TechCrunch it plans to ship “at least the first few units” by the end of 2025. The new robots come after Hugging Face acquired fellow French startup Pollen in April, whose technology formed the basis of the HopeJR, according to Delangue.
The waiting list for the robots is already open, though you’ll need to reach out to the CEO personally on X as they haven’t added a form to their website at the time of writing.
The introduction of budget-friendly humanoid robots comes at an interesting time; Meta announced in February that it was working on software that can power robots built by other companies (like Android does for smartphones), instead of launching a Meta-branded robot.
Tech giants like Nvidia have also been extremely bullish on the future of humanoid robotics, with CEO Jensen Huang predicting earlier this year that the market for humanoid robotics could hit $38 billion in the coming decades. "The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner," he said at the time.