Nous Research raises $90 million for Hermes business push

Nous Research has raised $90 million in a Series B financing led by Robot Ventures, saying it will use the capital to expand its open-source Hermes AI agent for business customers. Nvidia and Samsung were among the participating investors, alongside firms including Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Y Combinator. The company announced the financing on October 7. Reports put Nous Research’s valuation at $1.5 billion, but the company did not state a valuation in the CEO note describing the round. The financing brings its total funding to roughly $158 million, according to one report; another described the total as approximately $160 million. Nous plans to develop Hermes for Businesses, intended to let companies deploy AI agents for multistep tasks while retaining control over their data and models. The company has described the financing as supporting wider enterprise offerings. The round’s announcement does not establish that planned business features are already available. Hermes is an open-source agent that Nous says has been cloned or downloaded more than 24 million times. The company also estimates that it accounts for about 2.5% of global AI token usage.