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This Week in Startups · September 18, 2026 · 1h 33m

Hugging Face Co-Founder on Open-Source, Microduck, and NVIDIA

Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf joins Jason and Lon to discuss Microduck, the $399 open-source robot duck that sold 16,000 units off a tweet, the company's real business (storage, not tokens), vibe-coding robotics, his P-doom and airplane-safety analogy, the impact of Nvidia's acquisition on open models, and how Hugging Face was breached by OpenAI agents. Jason critiques Gavin Newsom's AI kill switch executive order and proposes KYC and insurance as alternatives. The show also covers Lucid and Bolt's 25,000 robotaxis for Europe and Snap's $2,195 Specs AR glasses.

This summary was generated from show notes and public descriptions, not from a full transcript review. Details may contain inaccuracies.

Preview

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Microduck: Hugging Face's $399 Open-Source Robot Duck00:04:17
Thomas Wolf describes how Hugging Face built a $399 open-source robot duck as a side project and sold 16,000 units from a single tweet.
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Hugging Face's Real Business Is Storage, Not Tokens00:08:43
Thomas Wolf reveals that Hugging Face's revenue primarily comes from storage, not from model access tokens.

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