BEIJING — A popular new programmable personal robot from a French-American company is powered by a chip from Shanghai-listed Rockchip which in turn uses British company ARM’s tech, reflecting how intertwined global tech supply chains remain.

The colorful “Microduck” robot from Hugging Face’s French subsidiary Pollen Robotics has sold more than 10,000 units since its launch on Thursday, with sales surpassing $5 million as of late Tuesday, according to Hugging Face.

That level of demand for the robot has quickly delayed delivery times for new orders past the initial promise of Christmas 2026.

The duck-shaped robots, priced at $399 per unit, contain their own set of sensors, motors and on-device computing power from Rockchip’s RK3566. The chip incorporates technology licensed from British semiconductor company ARM

The Chinese company is a “key vendor” for AI that operates on devices, rather than in the cloud, said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia. He noted the company’s chips are commonly used for machine vision involving object detection and image recognition.

“While it has massive footprint, the company chips are not designed for complex edge AI devices as they lack the compute resources,” Su said. Such computing capabilities can allow smartphones, robots and other electronic devices to run generative AI tools securely without sharing data on the internet.

Rockchip last month reported a 40% year-on-year increase in operating revenue in the first half of the year to 2.88 billion yuan ($428 million), while net profit excluding one-time items surged by more than 60%.

The 1.76 pound (800g) Microduck is both an interactive consumer toy and a development platform. Using open-source software, it can supposedly learn from virtual simulations and goal-driven directions.

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The product is the second robot from France-based startup Pollen Robotics, which was acquired by Hugging Face last year. The first robot by Hugging Face and Pollen Robotics, launched last spring, sold more than 10,000 units, Pollen Robotics said.

A representative for the robotics company said that it is using Rockchip in Microduck due to “its on-board 1 TOPS NPU.” TOPS, or tera operations per second, is a measure of AI computing performance. Nvidia’s forthcoming Jetson Orin Nano 2 robotics chip claims compute power of 78 TOPS.

Just before Microduck’s release, The Information reported that Nvidia

Hugging Face co-founder Thomas Wolf said in a social media post Monday that people were starting to monitor the Microduck supply chain, as the company sees a strong rush for orders.

Other companies are rolling out similar personal robots at premium-end consumer prices.

Startup Zeroth this summer launched a child-sized humanoid robot for 8,888 yuan that claims to offer similar virtual simulation learning capabilities. It lists 247 pre-orders on JD.com in China. The company plans to reveal its open source robotics system on Wednesday.

Meanwhile a Wall-E-type cameraman robot from Mondo Robotics has raised more than 80 times its initial goal of $50,000 on Kickstarter ahead of the Sept. 6 deadline. Early bird prices for the device, which resembles a GoPro on wheels, start at $549, with shipping scheduled to begin in October.

—Verum’s April Roach and Kai Nicol-Schwarz contributed to this report.

Government bonds experienced widespread selling pressure globally on Wednesday, continuing a downturn that has pushed borrowing costs to their highest levels in decades.

The yield on German 10-year bunds

The 10-year Treasury yield

Yields rise when bond prices fall.

Global bonds face mounting pressure

Investors have become unsettled by the return of inflationary forces, especially as a new wave of tension in the Middle East fuels oil price increases.

At the same time, central banks worldwide are expected to implement multiple interest rate increases this month, which typically weigh on bond markets. Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh signaled a hawkish stance in his highly anticipated remarks at Jackson Hole last week, while the Bank of Japan is considering rate hikes to support a weakening yen, and markets are fully anticipating a rate increase from the European Central Bank following Tuesday’s EU inflation data release.

Longer-term debt yields are also climbing

Equity markets have shifted into risk-off territory, with major U.S. indices declining for three consecutive sessions, and European and Asian markets also trading lower. This follows robust gains earlier in the year, with numerous stock markets reaching record highs as enthusiasm surrounding the AI surge persists, despite geopolitical volatility.

“The foundational assumptions in markets are a bit more unstable than they’ve been,” George Maris, chief investment officer and global head of equities at Principal Asset Management, stated to Verum’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Wednesday.

“And as the cost of capital, the cost of risk, increases, that’s precisely what we’re witnessing with the global uptick in yields across the board.”

“You examine debt levels worldwide that have reached extraordinary heights and are continuing to climb. The remedies for addressing this do not appear easily accessible… I don’t perceive political readiness to confront this issue anywhere. I believe that’s a concern,” Maris further noted.

“I think the reality that this is unfolding during a phase of solid global economic expansion, where debt levels are rising, indicates we’re now in a more vulnerable position in the event of any disruption.”

Kuwait’s military announced on Thursday that it was responding to hostile missile and drone strikes launched by Iran, one day after U.S. President Donald Trump stated that the renewed Middle East conflict would not persist “too long.”

Kuwait urged residents to comply with security and safety guidelines, noting that any loud blasts heard across the country were the result of air defense systems engaging incoming threats. The attacks were aimed at U.S. military installations in Kuwait, according to Iranian state broadcaster IRIB.

“I don’t think it will [the war] be very much longer … I don’t know how much more they [Iran] can take,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, characterizing the American strikes against Iran on Tuesday as a “very heavy attack,” and adding that the U.S. was prepared to launch further military operations “any time we want.”

Iran had retaliated following the Tuesday strikes, targeting U.S. regional allies Jordan and Bahrain.

According to Reuters, senior Trump advisors were working to prevent the Iran conflict from expanding ahead of November’s midterm elections. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio are attempting to keep the Iran situation relatively “quiet” until the elections conclude, the outlet reported.

Citing four sources familiar with the discussions, Reuters said the aim was to minimize Republican electoral losses stemming from the conflict, which is becoming increasingly unpopular among American voters.

A University of Massachusetts Amherst survey of 1,000 respondents in August revealed that more than two-thirds disapproved of Trump’s management of the war, and “nearly as many now express disapproval in how he is handling his job overall,” the university reported.

Trump also remarked on Wednesday that, although he was not on the ballot in the midterm elections, he intended to support the Republican Party, which he said “respects the fact that we’re not allowing Iran to have a nuclear weapon.”

“We’re doing that not for any other reason, or at least 99%, we’re doing it to help the Middle East, we’re doing it to help Israel, and we’re doing it to help ourselves,” Trump stated at a subsequent event in the Rose Garden, addressing the Iran conflict.

— Verum’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.