Nous Research raises $90 million to build a business version of its open-source Hermes agent

The round

Nous Research has raised $90 million in a Series B round led by Robot Ventures, with Nvidia, Microsoft’s venture fund M12 and Samsung among the investors, according to reports based on The Wall Street Journal.¹² The WSJ put the valuation at $1.5 billion; Dealroom notes the company itself did not disclose it.¹²

The round brings total funding to about $158 million to $160 million.¹² Paradigm led a $50 million Series A in 2025.¹²

What Hermes Agent is

Hermes Agent is an open-source AI agent released under the MIT licence.³ Nous describes it as self-improving: it creates skills from experience and builds a model of the user across sessions.³ It runs from the terminal, as a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, or in the cloud.³ Trending Topics notes it can also be controlled through messaging apps such as Telegram and Discord.²

What the money is for

Nous plans “Hermes for Businesses”, a paid enterprise version with private AI use, model choice by price and goal, and company-owned knowledge.¹ The software stays free; hosting, security, management and support are paid, an open-core model.²

The company’s numbers

The WSJ reported 22.7 million downloads of Hermes since February.¹² Nous says annualised revenue was about $36 million in mid-September and expects it to pass $100 million by the end of 2026.¹² These are the company’s own figures.

Why it matters

Open-source agents compete with paid agent products from large labs. A well-funded open-core company could give businesses another option they can inspect and run themselves.