Hugging Face unveils new low-cost, ‘open-source' humanoid robots to take on Tesla
HopeJR is an open-source humanoid robot that has been designed and built by Hugging Face in partnership with French robotics company The Robot Studio. The humanoid costs much lesser than other robots developed by competitors like Unitree, whose G1 robot costs $16,000, and Elon Musk-owned Tesla's Optimus Gen 2 humanoid which is expected to cost at least $20,000.
'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 was quoted as saying by TechCrunch.
Meet HopeJr, a full humanoid robot lowering the barrier to entry!
Capable of walking, manipulating many objects, open-source and costs under $3000 🤯
Designed by @therobotstudio and @huggingface 👇 pic.twitter.com/wCwo8YPOGV
— Remi Cadene (@RemiCadene) May 29, 2025
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
The announcement comes at a time when the field of robotics is seeing renewed interest, fueled by the momentum of the generative AI revolution. However, there are still several technical challenges that need to be addressed before humanoid robots can be reliably deployed in real-world environments.
Battery life is one such hurdle as the Unitree's G1 can only run for two hours on a single charge, as per a report by ArsTechnica. Hugging Face's HopeJR, on the other hand, has over 66 actuated degrees of freedom. This means that it has the ability to walk and handle or 'manipulate' objects, according to Remi Cadene, a principal research scientist at Hugging Face. Cadene previously worked at Tesla on the EV-maker's Optimus humanoid robot.
The AI and machine learning platform has also developed another robot called Reachy Mini that looks like one of the characters from Disney's popular animated film 'Wall-E'. Reachy Mini is also open-source and has been designed to test out AI applications. It is a desktop unit that has the ability to talk, listen, and move its head. Reachy Mini is expected to cost between $250 and $300.
While Hugging Face has not provided specific timelines for when the two humanoid will start shipping, its CEO reportedly said that the waitlist to be among the first to buy HopeJR and Reachy Mini is currently open.
In the past, Hugging Face has released various AI models designed to power robots as well as 3D-printable robotic arms. Earlier this year, the company reportedly acquired Pollen Robotics, a humanoid robotics company based in France, for an undisclosed amount.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
2 hours ago
- Mint
Transformer by Mint: The man shaping India's AI dreams, and continuing chaos at Vodafone
I've known Abhishek Singh, a senior bureaucrat, for some time now. He's been in the Indian tech ecosystem for a while, leading multiple government-backed digitisation initiatives. Now, as chief of the billion-dollar India AI Mission, he faces one of his biggest challenges in a public-service career spanning three decades. The reasons for this are varied. For one, the fact that AI presents a huge opportunity to a long-serving government official shows just how far the technology has come, and how it now affects everyone. More importantly, though, India could potentially gain or lose a lot depending on what we do with AI. Let me take you back a few decades. If you've read the venerable Chip War by Chris Miller (whom I had the pleasure to meet this January), you know that during America's push for leadership in electronic machines at the start of the world's tryst with semiconductors, India missed the bus. This allowed Japan and Taiwan to become global technology leaders despite being societies steeped in tradition. Then came the mobile revolution, and apart from emerging as a big global market, India almost missed the bus there, too. But then the Digital India and Make in India initiatives emerged, digital skills took centre stage, and India is now at a point where tech manufacturing is at least on the ascendancy. To cut a long story short, after having missed out on tectonic global shifts, India a chance to show with AI that it is not just the world's tech back-office and can lead from the front, too. Singh has a plan for this: building a voice-based foundational model that, along with India's government-supported base of thousands of Nvidia GPUs, would become India's next big export to the world after UPI. Here's why he thinks this will work. Speaking of tech's back offices… Jas Bardia, our resident correspondent for India's nearly $300-billion IT services industry, reported last week that there's a war brewing at India's mid-sized tech services firms, which truly believe they can take on the behemoths and win. India's IT services industry had began booming in the early 1990s, turning Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Wipro and the likes into the mammoths they are today. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, almost every household around where I grew up had at least one person working at these IT giants. The world, however, as changed considerably since then. Over the past two years companies such as Coforge and Persistent Services have emerged as serious competitors, pitching themselves as specialised firms with a deeper understanding of technology. Where does this leave TCS and its ilk? Will they lose out? Maybe not so soon, but market dynamics are undeniably changing. Also changing is the top job at Vodafone-Idea The beleaguered telecom operator began its India journey as Command Telecom, a telco operated under Kolkata's Usha Martin. In 2000, Hutchison Max acquired Command, leading to the creation of network provider Hutch in 2005. In 2007, Vodafone entered the market and created Vodafone Essar Limited, the entity's longest-standing identity so far. Despite its more than three decades of history, the Vodafone-Idea entity of today is in perilous financial health. Last week the telco appointed erstwhile chief operating officer Abhijit Kishore as CEO for three years as outgoing chief Akshay Moondra's term ended. Now, being a CEO is a dream for anyone in corporate India, but Vi faces a veritable nightmare. After all, it needs to catch up with Airtel and Jio on quality of service while paying off its eye-watering dues and needing $30 billion of capital immediately. Suddenly, Kishore's job doesn't seem like a dream. One thing's clear, though – whichever way this goes, Vodafone-Idea's story will make for a fascinating case study in India's telecom sector for years to come. Mint's telecom correspondent Jatin Grover brings you all the juicy details. Finally, satellites on the frontline Last week, Jatin and I wrote about India's potential revamp of sensitive defence networks in an exclusive report. The full story: over the past two years, the government has been exploring ways for modern satellite internet providers such as Elon Musk's Starlink and Bharti Airtel's OneWeb to offer their services to India's defence forces. The reason is clear: it's now imperative to have secure and blazing-fast internet connectivity even in remote bounary regions. India needs drones, consistent satellite feeds, and a host of other technologies to stay ahead of its enemies. Older satellite connections—which serve only as a backup—aren't up to the task. In other news: the battle for Chrome, and an iPhone 'Air' Last week, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas put in a bid for Google Chrome, saying his company was willing to spend $34.5 billion to buy the world's leading browser. However, he doesn't have that kind of money. You see, Perplexity is only worth about $18 billion. Chrome, on the other hand, is valued more than $50 billion. Then, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman added fuel to the fire, asking, 'Is Google really selling Chrome? If they are, we'd be interested. Why not?" Welcome to Silicon Valley's newest battleground, one that we'll be tracking. We've already reported about Google and OpenAI's silent fight, and how it forced Sergey Brin, a Valley legend, back to the engineering table. Finally, its that time of the year when we expect to see new Google Pixels and Apple iPhones. This year, rumours are that Apple will launch an 'iPhone Air' as part of its range this year. If you've followed Apple, you'd know the 'Air' branding refers to ultra-thin and light devices. The first MacBook Air, in fact, remains one of the most legendary consumer devices to date. Will the iPhone Air live up to this? Here's what we've gathered so far. Transformer by Mint is a weekly newsletter that brings India's most important and interesting technology updates under one umbrella. As the world transforms with every day of innovation, Transformer will keep a tab on the impact that technologies will make in each of our lives. Published every week, the newsletter brings some of India's tech landscape's most insightful coverages until date.
India.com
2 hours ago
- India.com
Who is Igor Babuschkin? Co-founder of Elon Musk's xAI resigns from company due to..., now will..
Who isn't familiar with Elon Musk? Well, Tesla owner Elon Musk is one of the most high-profile tech entrepreneurs in the world. Musk has been trying to establish himself in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and stay at the top; however, he seems to have received a setback. Igor Babuschkin, the co-founder of Musk's company xAI, has left the company. Babuschkin has also announced the launch of his new company, 'Babuschkin Ventures', which will focus on AI security and other innovations. Sharing a post on X(previously Twitter), Babuschkin wrote, 'Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023. I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed.' 'Building AI that advances humanity has been my lifelong dream. My parents left the Russian Federation after the collapse of the USSR in search of a better life for their kids. Life wasn't always easy as immigrants. Despite the hardships, my parents believed that human values were priceless: values like courage, compassion, curiosity for understanding the world,' the post further read. Furthermore, the post reads, 'As a child, I admired scientists like Richard Feynman and Max Planck, who relentlessly pushed the frontiers of physics in order to understand the universe. As a particle physics PhD student at CERN I was excited to contribute to that mission.' Today was my last day at xAI, the company that I helped start with Elon Musk in 2023. I still remember the day I first met Elon, we talked for hours about AI and what the future might hold. We both felt that a new AI company with a different kind of mission was needed. Building… — Igor Babuschkin (@ibab) August 13, 2025 In response to the long post, Elon Musk wrote,' Thanks for helping build @xAI! We wouldn't be here without you.' In the coming days, Babuschkin is expected to share more details of his new company. Igor has kept the details of his personal life mostly private. According to the media reports, he pursued computer science and AI. He spent a lot of time on areas such as Deep Learning, Neural Networks, and Natural Language Processing. His strong development skills gave him opportunities to work at a few of the top AI labs in the tech space. He worked for Google DeepMind, which is responsible for some of the world's biggest AI breakthroughs, like AlphaGo and protein folding. Later, he worked at OpenAI to help build the technical infrastructure for their robust AIs. Igor Babuschkin co-founded xAI with Elon Musk in 2023. Musk had established xAI as a transparent company that would build AI for humanity. At xAI, Babuschkin helped create the technical infrastructure, build an engineering team, and develop the necessary tools to conduct large-scale AI training. Arguably, his greatest achievement was the creation of the 'Memphis Supercluster,' which was the underlying backbone of xAI's Grok chatbot. Under the leadership of Babuschkin, xAI made rapid progress, surpassing competitors and developing highly successful AI models in a very short time.
NDTV
3 hours ago
- NDTV
"Unwise For A Human To Copy Paste AI Text": Zoho Chief Sridhar Vembu's Big Warning
Artificial intelligence could "slow us down" if not used properly, Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu has said. He also urged individuals against "copy-pasting" AI-generated text as their own. "It is unwise for a human to copy-paste AI text ... hiding the fact that it came from AI," Mr Vembu wrote in a detailed post on X. He shared how he uses AI daily, describing himself as a "moderate to heavy" user with two to three sessions a day. He revealed that he regularly switches between ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Grok and also uses Deepseek. Mr Vembu highlighted four main ways AI fits into his workflow. First, he said AI has largely replaced traditional web search, cutting his own search usage by 80 per cent. Second, he uses AI as a "debating partner," often making different models critique each other's responses to deepen his understanding. On business applications, Mr Vembu sees AI as useful in improving product experiences and speeding up customer support. He warned against replacing human agents or passing off AI-generated text as human-written. "It is unwise to let AI replace human agents," he wrote. For coding, Mr Vembu said, while AI can generate code, it requires extensive review for compliance, privacy, and security. "If any programmer submits AI-generated code without doing all this, they are failing at their job," he said, adding that in some cases, AI may even "slow down" development rather than speed it up. He added that at Zoho, programmers are encouraged to use AI mainly for learning and debate. "We continue to run a lot of experiments, and I will revise my opinion if and when facts change on the ground," Mr Vembu said. On our AI use as of August 2025. I use AI chat tools daily, at least 2-3 sessions a day. So I would count myself as a moderate to heavy user. I have the top 5 apps installed in my phone and I use all of them (see item 2). 1. AI helps me learn faster. It is a much better search… — Sridhar Vembu (@svembu) August 14, 2025 Earlier this year, Mr Vembu stepped down as Zoho's CEO to take on the role of chief scientist, focusing on deep tech R&D, particularly in AI, alongside his rural development mission. He said he was preparing to present Zoho's AI strategy to industry analysts in Austin. As part of the leadership transition, co-founder Shailesh Kumar Davey has taken over as group CEO, Tony Thomas now leads Zoho US, Rajesh Ganesan heads ManageEngine, and Mani Vembu oversees
