Anvil Robotics vs Duckie

About

Anvil Robotics is an open-source robotics hardware company building modular robotic platforms designed to accelerate research, development, and deployment of embodied AI systems. Founded with a mission to reduce the hardware barriers that slow AI robotics research, Anvil provides a standardized, extensible physical robot platform that researchers and developers can customize for their specific use cases rather than building bespoke hardware from scratch. The company's open-source approach is philosophically aligned with how software tooling accelerated the broader AI revolution.\n\nAnvil's modular robot design allows teams to swap components, add sensors, and integrate custom end-effectors without the mechanical engineering overhead typically required for robot customization. The platform is designed to be simulation-compatible and easy to deploy in real environments, bridging the sim-to-real gap that challenges many robotics AI teams. Its software stack is open-source and built for integration with common robot learning frameworks, making it accessible to the broad AI research community.\n\nWith a $5.5M seed round, Anvil has achieved notable early traction: 100+ units have been deployed to organizations including NVIDIA's GEAR robotics lab and 50+ academic and research institutions as of April 2026. NVIDIA's adoption is a significant signal — GEAR is one of the world's leading robot learning research groups, and their selection of Anvil's platform validates its technical quality and research-grade utility. Anvil is positioned to become foundational infrastructure for the next generation of embodied AI research, similar to how certain open-source software frameworks became standard building blocks in machine learning.