Open-Source Hermes Agent Maker Nous Research in Talks for New Funding at $1.5B Valuation
Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes agent, is finalizing a new funding round led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation, with plans to raise at least $75 million.
According to three sources familiar with the deal, Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes agent, is close to closing a new funding round led by Robot Ventures, with significant participation from USV and other prominent investors, at a $1.5 billion valuation. The company is raising at least $75 million and has seen high investor interest.
This round comes less than three months after Nous announced its $50 million Series A. Nous Research declined to comment, while USV and Robot Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra, the company had raised a total of $70 million before this round from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan, according to Crunchbase.
Besides developing Hermes, Nous Research operates a decentralized network for hardware contributions to computing and training, and has released language models focused on coding and math.
Weeks after OpenClaw's agent went viral, Nous Research launched Hermes as a competitor. Unlike OpenClaw, Hermes ships with built-in "skills" such as web search, coding, and image understanding, and is designed to automatically learn from usage and build more skills without intervention.
Hermes has gained a massive following on GitHub, boasting approximately 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks. Developers can run it on a desktop or virtual private server, but Nous also offers a cloud-hosted version with paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month. Sources say the new funding will help expand Hermes products and the business model.
