Software development platform Hugging Face is taking orders on Reachy Mini, a table-top robot that lets people use the latest AI models to develop, test, deploy, and share real-world AI applications from their desk. The tiny test subject is 11 inches at work and nine inches in sleep mode. Due to begin shipping later this summer, Reachy Mini comes in two configurations: a $299 Lite version that must be tethered to a computer running Mac or Linux OS (Windows coming soon) and a wireless $449 model that has a Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer built-in.

One of the challenging aspects of robotics is “you can’t just build on your laptop. You need to have some sort of robotics partner to help in your building, and most people won’t be able to buy $70,000 robots,” Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue told VentureBeat, referencing the typical cost of an industrial robotics system. While prices are coming down, Tesla’s humanoid Optimus robot is “expected to cost $20,000 to $30,000.”

A Hugging Face blog post describes its cartoon-cute droid as “an expressive, open-source robot designed for human-robot interaction, creative coding, and AI experimentation.”

VentureBeat says “Reachy Mini emerges from Hugging Face’s April acquisition of French startup Pollen Robotics, marking the company’s most significant hardware expansion since its founding” in New York in 2016, noting that “the AI platform that has become the GitHub of machine learning.”

Programmable in Python, and soon JavaScript and Scratch, Reachy integrates natively with the Hugging Face Hub, which provides more than 15 prebuilt, plug-and-play robot behaviors at launch, “so you can play and learn right out of the box,” writes the company, which clearly intends Reachy to be “fun” as well as “customizable and ready to be part of your next coding project.”

TechCrunch reports the Hub provides access “to more than 1.7 million AI models and more than 400,000 datasets.” Hugging Face also enables application sharing through its Spaces feature.

Hugging Face “initially unveiled the prototypes” of the Reachy devices in May, along with a humanoid robot named HopeJR, writes TechCrunch, noting at the time that the Reachy Mini “can move its head, talk and listen.”

The Reachy robots “come in a kit for developers to build themselves” for an end-result with “two screens for eyes and two antennas,” per TechCrunch.

While Reachy Mini Lite begins shipping this summer, Hugging Face says the flagship Reachy Mini will be “rolling out in batches” starting in the fall and through 2026.