The product is real and the official vendor channels confirm the core of the claim. The Pollen Robotics store page describes Microduck as available for pre-order at $399 before taxes and shipping, with first deliveries targeted before Christmas 2026, available at launch in the US, Canada, EU, UK, Norway, Switzerland, Japan and South Korea.

The official press kit gives the specifications as 15 motors, 25 cm, under 800 g, a camera, LiDAR and two IMUs, and notes that the Pollen team joined Hugging Face in April 2025.

Engadget reports the robot is a biped standing 25cm tall and weighing under 800g with 15 motors, a built-in camera, a small LiDAR sensor, two IMUs and an articulated beak that can pick up objects, and that Pollen Robotics was acquired by Hugging Face.

On the order figure, Hugging Face CEO Clem Delangue stated publicly that more than 10,000 Microducks were pre-ordered in five days, that the company was not expecting that many, that it exceeds the total number of Reachy Mini units in a year, and that it will generate delays, so orders will now be first-ordered, first-shipped . CNBC reported on September 1 that the Microduck had sold more than 10,000 units since its launch on the previous Thursday, with sales surpassing $5 million as of late Tuesday, according to Hugging Face, and that the demand had already delayed delivery times for new orders past the initial promise of Christmas 2026. The widely repeated "$4 million" figure is arithmetic on the unit count: Yahoo Finance, syndicating CNBC, wrote that Pollen Robotics sold more than 10,000 units in the week since going on sale, crossing $4 million in total sales at the $399 price point .

The current state of the official store page has moved since the post was published. The store now carries a notice that Christmas delivery can no longer be promised for new Microduck orders, that production is ramping up, that it is first ordered first shipped, and that the current estimate for new orders is 4 to 6 months.

On the open-source scope, one analysis notes that the mechanical and electronic design files are not open, making this open-source software rather than open-source hardware , and CNX Software reported that while the software stack is open source, nothing was said about the mechanical and hardware design files and Pollen Robotics told the press not to refer to the robot as "open-source hardware" . A third-party repository adds nuance: it states the software is Apache-2.0 and the hardware is partly open, with the RPi Robot HAT board fully published under Apache-2.0 including KiCad project, Gerbers, BOM and STEP files, and carries a correction dated 2026-09-03 retracting its earlier statement that the hardware was not open at all .