Nous Research Confirms $90M at a $1.5B Valuation and Takes Its Open-Source Hermes Agent to Business

An open-source agent framework now has Nvidia and Samsung on its cap table and a $1.5 billion valuation, and it wants enterprise customers next. Nous Research, which makes the open-source Hermes Agent, confirmed a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported on October 7, confirming its own earlier reporting.

Robot Ventures led the round. Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, participated, per TechCrunch. That brings total funding for the three-year-old company to $158 million. The Wall Street Journal also reported the round earlier on October 7.

Hermes for Businesses

The new money funds a push into enterprise with Hermes for Businesses, which TechCrunch says lets companies deploy customised multi-step agents while keeping their data private. It sets up a test of whether an open agent stack can win business buyers who are also being courted by OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft's own agent products. Microsoft listed Hermes Agent by Nous Research among the agents that will add support for its newly generally available Windows agent containers the same day, with no date attached.

The usage and revenue numbers, and whose they are

The figures differ by source, and they measure different things:

• Company estimates, via TechCrunch: Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and drives roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage.
• The Wall Street Journal's reporter, on X: Hermes was downloaded more than 22 million times since February and overtook OpenClaw and other open-source assistants by usage, per OpenRouter.
• Revenue: Nous was at roughly $36 million in annualised revenue by mid-September and expects to pass $100 million before the end of 2026, according to The Wall Street Journal, as reported by TechCrunch.

Clones and downloads are not the same metric, and neither measures paying customers. The two counts come from different methods and are not reconciled.

Limits

• The Wall Street Journal's article is paywalled and was not read; its figures are cited via TechCrunch and the reporter's post on X.
• Usage figures are company estimates (TechCrunch) or OpenRouter-based (WSJ) and are not reconciled.
• Terms beyond valuation, round size and participants were not disclosed in the sources read.

Sources

• TechCrunch: Nous Research confirms it hit $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business users (October 7, 2026)
• Yuliya Chernova (The Wall Street Journal) on X: "Nous Research, maker of open-source AI assistant Hermes, has raised $90 million…" (October 7, 2026)
• Times of AI: RTX Spark gets a price, and Windows gets a cage for agents (October 8, 2026)