Yesterday, they launched a $299 robot. It looks like a toy, but it opens up a world of AI. Today, I talk to the person who made it real.

Matthieu Lapeyre is the founder of Pollen Robotics and one of the most quietly influential roboticists in Europe. He’s been building open-source humanoids long before it was cool, from Poppy to Reachy to Reachy Mini.

We talk about how growing up without a tech background shaped him, why he left research to ship hardware, and how he kept going through years of bootstrapping with barely enough to pay the team. He shares what it’s really like to live on the edge for years, and how joining Hugging Face gave them the launchpad they needed.

We also get into the making of Reachy Mini, why it's designed to be unbreakable, what inspired the egg-shaped head, and how it could become the iPhone moment for robotics.