Bordeaux-built Microduck robots pass 20,000 preorders after Jensen Huang's GTC Berlin demo
What happened? Microduck, a $399 walking robot made by Bordeaux-based Pollen RoboticsDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, the robotics team of Hugging Face, has passed 20,000 preorders, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue said on X. The surge followed Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's keynote at GTC Berlin on 21 October 2026, where he ordered four Microducks to sit, take a nap and somersault on stage. Three keeled over for the nap on cue; one needed extra persuasion, and Huang told a distracted duck to "pay attention, stay focused", Reuters reported. TechCrunch, which reported the 20,000 figure on 23 October, asked whether it could become the hottest toy for Christmas.
The robot: Microduck is a 25 cm, sub-800 g biped with 15 motors, a camera, a depth sensor and a beak that can pick up small objects. It ships with pre-trained moves learned in simulation on Nvidia's stack, and owners can train new tricks and share them with the community, Pollen says. Preorders opened on 27 August at $399, and first deliveries are targeted before Christmas 2026 in North America and Europe. It is Pollen's second consumer robot after the Reachy Mini desktop robot.
Why it matters: Huang used the demo to argue that Europe's engineering base gives it an edge in physical AI and robotics. Pollen, founded in 2016 as an INRIA spinout, was acquired by Hugging Face in April 2025, and Nvidia agreed in September to buy Hugging Face for about $12.9 billion. The caveats: the order count comes from Hugging Face itself, preorders are reservations rather than sales, and shipping tens of thousands of legged robots in about two months is a much harder job than taking orders.
Sources: TechCrunch · Reuters · Pollen Robotics
Image credit: Pollen Robotics via TechCrunch
