# Anthropic Legal Win, Hugging Face Robot, Amazon Affiliate

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-08-29

## Transcript

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Anthropic gets its first court win over the Pentagon supply chain risk label.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your weekend crunch featuring three big tech headlines starts right now.
On Thursday, Hugging Face unveiled the MicroDuck, a cute little duck-like robot that sells for $399 smackaroos and ships before Christmas, of course.
Clem DeLong, CEO of Hugging Face, said the micro-duck is an open-source robot you can teach new tricks with reinforcement learning.
The 25-centimeter-tall duck can waddle, pick things up when it falls, crouch, and even roller skate.
Welcome to the era of open-source, affordable robots to democratize physical AI and world models, DeLong said.
Now, Hugging Face is best known as a platform and community where developers go for open model weights.
However, the company acquired French startup Pollen Robotics in April 2025 to build affordable open-source AI hardware.
A couple of months later, the two launched Reaching Mini, a small desktop robot.
Today, they sell the $499 ReGi Mini, which is powered by a Raspberry Pi computer, and the $399 ReGi Mini Lite, powered by a Mac or PC.
Now, the new MicroDuck perceives the world with a camera, LiDAR sensors, and two IMUs, inertial measurement units that measure and report an object's movement.
Pollan Robotics noted that the micro-duck's behaviors can be trained in simulation and directly deployed on the robot.
Developers can then fine-tune the bot, retrain it, and redeploy it.
The launch of the micro.com's Hugging Face is reportedly set to be acquired by NVIDIA at a $13 billion valuation.
NVIDIA and Hugging Face have been partners for years, with NVIDIA providing the startup's infrastructure since at least 2023.
Both companies have also been publicly aligned in promoting open-source AI.
Also on Thursday, YouTube announced that eligible creators in the U.S.
can now tag Amazon products in their content and receive a cut of the sales.
Creators can link Amazon products in their shorts, long-form videos, and live streams.
The update turns product recommendations into a more direct revenue stream for creators.
And for Amazon, well, the move puts its massive online marketplace inside one of the most...
popular video platforms.
Now, although YouTube already runs a shopping affiliate program with participating retailers, the addition of Amazon's vast catalog essentially allows creators to recommend a variety of products through a native integration.
By bringing Amazon into the shopping affiliate program, creators no longer need to paste associates' links in the video's description, then hope viewers copy the link when they make a purchase.
Instead, YouTube says Amazon will provide it with a curated catalog of highly requested and trending products that creators can tag in their videos.
If a creator can't find a specific product that they want to tag, they can request to add it by reaching out to YouTube support.
The feature also includes auto-tagging support.
If enabled, YouTube's systems can automatically review a creator's recent uploads to identify and tag eligible Amazon products.
YouTube notes that creators won't see breakdowns for specific products.
or individual videos in their analytics, but that they'll see their overall daily earnings in YouTube Studio.
If a viewer ends up returning an item, that commission will be deducted from the creator's balance.
To be eligible, creators must be enrolled in YouTube's partner and shopping affiliate programs, have an active Amazon influencer or associates account, and, of course, link it to their YouTube channel.
Wow, Thursday was a pretty busy day because also on Thursday, well, Thursday evening to be exact, a federal judge in California ruled that the Trump administration's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk...
was illegal.
Yeah, U.S.
District Judge Rita Lynn said in her ruling that Defense Secretary Pete Hexath's labeling of Anthropic as a risk to national security signified unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment and said the decision was arbitrary and capricious.
Lynn also said Anthropic was denied due process, as required under the Fifth Amendment.
You see, earlier this year, Hexeth and President Immortan Joe, I mean Donald Trump, labeled Anthropic a supply chain risk and ordered all federal agencies, even those outside of defense, to stop working with the clawed maker.
Now, the dispute stemmed from Anthropic setting hard lines on certain safety guardrails that would allow the Pentagon to use its models for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of American citizens.
The Pentagon, well, denied that it would use Anthropic's models for anything but lawful purposes and alleged that Anthropic could try to control the military's use of the models it bought and paid for.
In her ruling, Lin said that the government's words and deeds confirmed that the challenged actions were based on a desire to make a public example out of Anthropic for its arrogance in criticizing the government.
She pointed out the disconnect between the supply chain label and other actions from the government, like Hexet's proposition to apply the Defense Production Act to Anthropic, which would mean the company was essential to national security rather than a threat to it.
She also pointed to the Department of Defense continuing to pursue a contract with the company and the government collaborating with the company's new model, Mythos, for cybersecurity.
Lynn also said it's clear that Anthropic undisputedly lacks any backdoor access to its technology once it hands it over to the DoD.
Anthropic filed two complaints against the DoD in March, one in California, one in Washington, D.C.
The D.C.
suit is still ongoing.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Rebecca Belan, Aisha Malik, and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here next week.
And until then, find us at TechCrunch.com.