Nous Research confirms it hit $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business users
Oct 7, 2026, 1:48 PM · TechCrunch
Nous Research built its name on an open-source agent people actually use. The $1.5 billion question is whether it can sell a private, enterprise version without hollowing out the open project.
Why it matters
Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes Agent, has raised a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, confirming earlier TechCrunch reporting. Robot Ventures led, with Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital participating. TechCrunch notes Donald Trump Jr. is a partner at 1789. Total funding for the three-year-old company now stands at $158 million.
The money funds a move into enterprise with Hermes for Businesses, which lets companies deploy customized agents for multi-step workflows while keeping their data private. By the company's own estimates, Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and drives roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage.
From the desk
We think this is a good sign for open agents. Most of the agent conversation is dominated by the big labs and their closed products. A small company proving that an open-source agent can win real developer adoption, and then raise serious money on it, gives buyers another path. Enterprises that want agents but are wary of shipping their data to one vendor's cloud have a reason to pay attention.
We would hold the adoption numbers loosely, though. Clone counts and a share of global token usage are the company's estimates, not audited figures, and token share is a hard thing to measure from the outside. The revenue picture is similarly early. The Wall Street Journal, as cited by TechCrunch, reported about $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September and an expectation of passing $100 million before year end. That is a steep curve to promise in a few months.
The bigger tension is familiar from open-source businesses. The community version earns trust; the paid version pays the bills. Over time, the temptation is to move the best features behind the enterprise wall. I'm watching whether Hermes for Businesses adds management and privacy on top of the open agent, or quietly starts to diverge from it.
There is also a downside that comes with any agent sold for multi-step work inside companies. The more steps an agent takes without a human in the loop, the more a single bad instruction or poisoned input can cascade. Keeping data private is one promise. Proving the agent behaves inside real business systems is a harder one.
Context
Hermes Agent is Nous Research's open-source agent, popular with developers and individual users. The company also offers Hermes Desktop, a free, MIT-licensed build of the agent that runs local models.
Who feels it
- Enterprises
- Another option for deploying agents with private data handling, from a vendor whose core agent is open source and inspectable.
- Open-source developers
- Fresh funding can sustain the project, but it also raises the stakes on whether the community version keeps pace with the paid one.
- Competing agent vendors
- A well-funded open-source rival with real adoption puts pressure on closed agent products on price and transparency.
What to watch
- Whether Nous reports revenue near the $100 million mark the Journal said it expects before year end
- Feature differences between Hermes for Businesses and the open-source Hermes Agent
- Named enterprise customers and the workflows they actually hand to agents
- Any independent measurement of Hermes Agent's usage claims