Microduck robot preorders top 20,000 after Nvidia demo

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang shared the stage with four small duck-shaped robots at the end of his GTC Berlin keynote on Wednesday, October 21. The clip spread quickly online, and by the next day preorders for the Microduck had passed 20,000 units, Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue said in a post cited by TechCrunch. Pollen Robotics, the robotics arm of Hugging Face, builds the $399 open-source robot, and it is expected to ship in time for Christmas.techcrunch.com

On October 22, Delangue wrote on X that the "keynote effect" would push the robot past "20,000+ total pre-orders probably tomorrow making Microduck probably the most sold robot of 2026," GIGAZINE reported. A day later he said the popularity of Microduck and the earlier Reachy Mini meant Pollen and Hugging Face would need to hire "in all functions," according to the same report.youtube.com

A demo with stumbles

Huang told the robots to sit and then stand. When he told them to take a nap, three dropped to the floor right away, while the fourth kept walking a few steps before it lay down too, TechEBlog reported. He then asked for a somersault, and a couple of the robots managed the roll. Another one wandered off, which led Huang to say, "Pay attention. Stay focused. Come here," per the outlet. Nvidia's RTX Spark account posted the clip with the caption, "When @jensenhuang asks for a somersault, you deliver," as embedded by TechCrunch.techeblog.com+1

The demo was meant to show Nvidia's robot training workflow. An AI agent designed a training course and tested a virtual version of the robot in Isaac Sim. The heavier training then ran on cloud servers, and the results were checked on an RTX Spark laptop before being moved to the physical robots, Moneycontrol reported. The keynote, which focused on Nvidia's plans for Europe, ended with Huang saying, "Everybody can build agents," according to the outlet.moneycontrol.com

The robot and its owner

The Microduck was announced in late August. It is 25 centimeters tall and weighs about 800 grams, and it has 15 motors, a camera, a depth sensor and a beak that can grasp objects, GIGAZINE noted. Out of the box it can walk, sit, get up after falling and even roller-skate. Its whole software stack is open source, TechEBlog reported. Owners can teach it new tricks and share them with other users, TechCrunch said.techcrunch.com+2

Hugging Face bought Pollen in 2025. In September, Nvidia agreed to buy Hugging Face for about $12.9 billion. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approval, according to Nvidia's SEC filing. Delangue told CNBC that he had approached Huang about the deal over the summer, "and a few weeks later, here we are."sec.gov+1