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Santa Clara, CA - March 18, 2026 Artificial intelligence is entering a new phase as it moves from cloud software into robots, edge devices, and physical environments. The global embodied AI market is projected to grow from USD 4.44 billion in 2025 to USD 23.06 billion by 2030, highlighting the rapid rise of intelligent machines capable of real-world perception, reasoning, and action. In this new generation of AI systems, voice is emerging as the primary interface between humans and machines.
At NVIDIA GTC 2026, Agora, a global leader in real-time engagement and conversational AI infrastructure, and Seeed Studio, a global open hardware innovation platform providing developer tools, hardware modules, and manufacturing services for IoT, robotics, and edge AI, announced a collaboration to accelerate the development of voice-native embodied AI systems.
In coordination with ecosystem partners NVIDIA, Hugging Face, and Pollen Robotics, the initiative provides developers with a complete stack for building real-time AI robots and voice-native devices, combining:
By integrating robotics hardware, edge AI computing, multimodal AI models, and ultra-low-latency conversational AI infrastructure, the collaboration enables developers to bring AI agents into the physical world with ultra-low-latency interaction, global connectivity, and advanced voice capabilities such as far-field audio capture, speaker recognition, and customizable wake-word activation for natural, lifelike experiences.
The collaboration will be showcased at the Seeed Studio Embodied AI Hackathon, in Santa Clara on March 21-22, immediately following GTC.
At the center of the initiative is Reachy Mini, an open-source humanoid robot originally developed by Pollen Robotics in collaboration with Hugging Face and integrated with Seeed Studio’s hardware ecosystem.
“AI is moving rapidly from cloud applications into robots and intelligent devices,” said Tony Wang, Chief Revenue Officer and Co-founder at Agora. “Real-world AI requires natural, real-time interaction. Through our collaboration with Seeed Studio and ecosystem partners such as NVIDIA, developers can combine Agora’s conversational AI infrastructure with platforms like Reachy Mini and edge computing to build voice-native intelligent agents designed for real-world environments.”
During the hackathon, developers will build embodied AI agents by combining the Reachy Mini robot platform, NVIDIA Jetson edge AI computing, ElevenLabs STT, multimodal AI models from Hugging Face, and Agora Conversational AI for real-time, human-like interaction.
This architecture allows advanced multimodal AI models to run seamlessly on edge hardware while enabling natural, real-time human–robot interaction through voice. The result is a new generation of AI-native robots capable of perception, reasoning, and real-time conversation, enabling new possibilities for personal robotics, intelligent assistants, and AI companions.
In addition to robotics innovation, Agora and Seeed Studio are collaborating to enable voice-native edge AI devices through Seeed Studio’s reSpeaker platform.
Powered by the XMOS XVF3800 AI voice processor, the reSpeaker 4-microphone array provides advanced far-field voice capture capabilities, including:
These capabilities allow voice AI systems to operate reliably even in noisy environments across various applications, such as smart homes, smart conferencing, AI voice agents, and robotics.
When integrated with Agora’s Conversational AI Engine, the reSpeaker platform becomes a complete edge conversational AI system.
The architecture enables a real-time conversational loop where:
This end-to-end pipeline enables developers to build production-ready voice AI devices such as smart assistants, robotics interfaces, AI companions, and intelligent IoT products.
Leslie Liao, Vice President of Product at Seeed Studio, added, “The seamless integration of Agora’s Conversational AI Engine (Convo AI) and Seeed’s reSpeaker serves as the smart ear for embodied AI, enabling robots and intelligent hardware to interact with humans through natural, real-time conversation. Together with our open hardware ecosystem and partners like NVIDIA and Hugging Face, we are empowering developers to build the next generation of embodied AI applications.”
To highlight the shift into the next generation of physical AI, Agora will present the Convo AI Embodied Intelligence Award during the hackathon.
The award recognizes teams building voice-native, multi-modal physical intelligence designed for real-world deployment.
Winning projects will demonstrate systems where:
From prototype to platform, the award celebrates innovations advancing the next generation of physical AI systems built to scale.
The Embodied AI Hackathon invites developers, engineers, and robotics enthusiasts to explore the future of AI-powered robotics and voice-native devices.
Participants will receive hands-on access to:
Projects will be evaluated on technical implementation, innovation, and completeness, with prizes totaling over $6,000, featuring high-value coupons, a Reachy Mini Lite, and Amazing Hand.
Agora is a global leader in real-time engagement, providing developers with the APIs to embed real-time voice, video, and conversational AI into any application. Headquartered in Santa Clara, CA, Agora is trusted by over 2,000 organizations to power best-in-class digital experiences across all industries.
Learn more: https://www.agora.io
Seeed Studio has been a leading Open Hardware company since 2008, empowering users to create real-world digital solutions. We provide industrial-ready modules and devices, and open up the capability of product, production, and promotion. By embracing open source, community building and integrated software suites, we are proactively lowering the tech barriers and including users with diverse expertise for localized matters.
Learn more: https://www.seeedstudio.com
