Hugging Face is moving further into robotics with two planned products aimed at AI developers: a humanoid robot called HopeJR and a smaller desktop-style robot called Reachy Mini. The most striking part of the announcement is the target price for HopeJR: around $3,000.
That figure puts Hugging Face’s plan in a very different price band from other early humanoid robots mentioned in the same conversation, including Unitree’s $16,000 G1 and Tesla’s Optimus Gen 2, which is expected to cost at least $20,000.
A lower-cost humanoid for AI developers
HopeJR is the bigger of the two robots Hugging Face revealed. It is a humanoid robot with up to 66 actuated degrees of freedom, and Hugging Face Principal Research Scientist Remi Cadene says it can walk and manipulate objects.
The robot was co-designed with French robotics company The Robot Studio. Hugging Face plans for HopeJR to be open source, which is central to how the company is positioning it. The pitch is not just that the robot could be cheaper, but that developers would be able to inspect and work with it directly.
“The important aspect is that these robots are open source, so anyone can assemble, rebuild, [and] understand how they work, and [they’re] affordable, so that robotics doesn’t get dominated by just a few big players with dangerous black-box systems,” Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue told TechCrunch.
That statement frames HopeJR as more than a consumer gadget. Hugging Face is best known as a machine learning and AI development platform, and its main customer base already works with models, tools, and experiments. A lower-cost open source robot could give that audience a more physical way to test AI systems.
Why the price matters
Humanoid robotics is still an early and expensive field. In that context, a robot planned at around $3,000 stands out because it could bring hands-on robotics work closer to individual developers, small labs, and teams that cannot justify much higher prices.
The source comparison is sharp. Unitree’s G1 has been floated at $16,000. Tesla’s Optimus Gen 2 is expected to cost at least $20,000, while being described as much more advanced, at least in theory. HopeJR’s planned price does not automatically make it comparable in capability, but it changes the accessibility discussion.
For AI developers, the closest analogy in the source is Raspberry Pi. The point is not that HopeJR is a simple board, but that Hugging Face appears to be aiming for a robotics platform that developers can buy, study, modify, and use as a base for AI work.
Reachy Mini targets smaller experiments
The second robot is Reachy Mini. It is a smaller device described as a cute, Wall-E-esque statue bust that can turn its head and talk to the user. Its planned price is between $250 and $300.
Reachy Mini is meant, among other things, for testing AI applications. That gives Hugging Face a lower-cost entry point alongside the more ambitious HopeJR. A developer interested in interaction, speech, or application testing may not need a full humanoid body to begin experimenting.
Taken together, the two robots suggest a ladder of hardware for AI work:
- Reachy Mini for smaller AI application tests, head movement, and user interaction.
- HopeJR for humanoid robotics work involving walking and object manipulation.
Both products fit Hugging Face’s broader move into robotics. The company has previously released AI models intended for robots, as well as a 3D-printable robotic arm. It also announced an acquisition of Pollen Robotics this year, a company that was working on humanoid robots.
Robotics still faces practical limits
Price is not the only barrier. The source points to battery life as another major issue for robotics like this. Unitree’s G1, for example, only runs for about two hours on a single charge.
That matters because a robot’s usefulness depends on more than its purchase price. A system that can walk, manipulate objects, or interact with a user still has to operate long enough to be practical in development and testing. Lower hardware costs may help more people experiment, but the technical constraints remain real.
Hugging Face’s robotics effort is therefore best understood as an attempt to make the field more accessible, not as proof that humanoid robots are suddenly mature products. HopeJR and Reachy Mini are positioned as developer tools: open, relatively affordable, and tied to AI experimentation.
If Hugging Face can bring these products to market at the prices it has described, it could widen who gets to build with robot hardware. That is the larger significance of the announcement: a company rooted in AI development is trying to make physical robots part of the same open, hackable ecosystem.