AI Dev Platform Facing has acquired Pollen Robot, a France-based robotics startup, in a private volume. Wired reports that Hugging Face is planning to sell Reghiny 2, a humanoid robot for pollen, and to download and suggest code improvements to developers.
The pollen robot aimed at bringing affordable humanoid robots into the home was founded in 2016 by Matthieu Lapeyre and Pierre Rouanet. According to CrunchBase, the company was able to raise 2.5 million euros (approximately $2.83 million) from investors, including BPIFRANCE, before the exit.
If you follow the progress of robotics over the last 18 months, you will increasingly notice how robotics is becoming the next frontier to unlock.
Embracing a face comparable to robotics and all AI fields, we believe in a future where AI and robots are open source.
– Thomas Wolf (@thom_wolf) April 14, 2025
The acquisition marks the expansion of Faces’ robotics efforts, which had pollen closely involved. Last year, Embracing Face worked with pollen to build “Le Robot” and create an open source robot trained to do various household chores. Hugging Face also founded a robotics team led by Remi Cadene, a former robotics engineer for Tesla’s Optimus program.