Two New Humanoid AI Robots Stand Out For Being Affordable and Open Source
The AI dev company Hugging Face announced on May 29 the release of two open-source humanoid robots: Reachy Mini is a desktop unit, and HopeJR is a full-size robot.
Reachy Mini will be able to talk, listen, and move its head, and can be used to test AI apps. HopeJR will be able to move its arms and work, and perform 66 independent movements.
Hugging Face’s co-founder and CEO Clem Delangue shared his thoughts on the company’s new output, explaining, “The important aspect is that these robots are open source, so anyone can assemble, rebuild, [and] understand how they work, and [that they’re] affordable, so that robotics doesn’t get dominated by just a few big players with dangerous black-box systems.”
Price and availability
Hugging Face estimates the costs of the humanoid robots to be approximately $3,000 per unit for HopeJR and $300 for the smaller Reachy Mini desktop unit. Tariffs may influence the final prices.
The prices of these products are significantly lower than those of competing robotics companies. For example, Tesla’s Optimus Gen2 humanoid robot is expected to cost at least $20,000, and Unitree’s G1 robot is $16,000.
The company has yet to share an exact shipping timeline for these robots, but both may ship as soon as the end of 2025.
Expanding its robotics offerings
Hugging Face has been in the humanoid robotics space for a while, launching in 2024 LeRobot, a collection of open-use tools, datasets, and AI models for users to leverage to build robotics systems. The release of HopeJR and Reachy Mini comes following the company’s April 2025 acquisition of Pollen Robotics. Acquiring the startup enabled Hugging Face to take on the effort necessary to develop its new robotic output.
Since then, the platform has continued evolving in the robotics realm, having released an updated version of its SO-101 robotic arm, created in partnership with French robotics company The Robot Studio. Hugging Face has also been expanding its LeRobot platform to include training data for self-driving machines through a partnership with the AI startup Yaak.
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