Nous Research raised $90 million in a Series B, the company confirmed Oct. 7, valuing it at $1.5 billion according to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the deal. The round funds "Hermes for Businesses," a paid enterprise layer built on top of Hermes, the open-source AI agent Nous has kept free and MIT-licensed since its February 2026 release.
Somehow, $90 million is modest in modern fundraising. We at Nous have always delivered more with less.
Nous formed in 2023 as a counterweight to centralized, closed AI development. Its early work included fine-tuning Meta's Llama models and publishing YaRN, a method for extending open models' context windows at lower cost -- the kind of infrastructure work that built the credibility Hermes later cashed in as a finished agent product.
- 2023 — Nous Research founded, positioning itself against centralized, closed AI labs.
- Feb 2026 — Hermes releases under the MIT license -- free, open-source, able to run any model a user picks.
- Jul 14, 2026 — Reporting says Nous is finalizing at least $75M at a $1.5B valuation, led by Robot Ventures.
- Oct 7, 2026 — The round closes at $90M, same $1.5B valuation, funding a new enterprise product.
Hermes itself runs on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and reaches users through Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp rather than a single standalone app -- part of why a clone count is easy to rack up and hard to verify independently. The agent's stated capabilities include coding, image understanding, and autonomous web search, the same category of tasks Hermes for Businesses is now packaging with the access controls an individual user never needed.
The investor list is notable less for size than for who showed up: three companies that sell the infrastructure Hermes runs on or compete with it directly in enterprise software -- Nvidia, Microsoft's M12, and Samsung -- joined Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Y Combinator.
What that money buys is the gap between a free agent and a sellable product:
Hermes, free vs. enterprise
| Hermes (core) free, MIT-licensed | Hermes for Businesses new, this round's product | |
|---|---|---|
| License / cost | Free, MIT, self-hosted or any cloud | Paid; pricing not disclosed with the round |
| Deployment | Runs on a user's own machine or server | Private deployment with workspace controls |
| Identity & access | None built in | Single sign-on |
| Oversight | None built in | Auditing and cost visibility |
| Model choice | User picks any model it supports | Same, pitched on price/goal fit for a company |
| Support | Community, GitHub | Service-level agreements |
Hermes' underlying pitch hasn't changed: run any model a company chooses, locally or in its own cloud, with company data never leaving its control. What's new is everything around that core -- the parts an individual developer doesn't need and an enterprise buyer won't deploy without.
Before this round, Nous had raised roughly $70 million total, including a $50 million Series A led by Paradigm. The $90 million close more than doubles total funding in a single round -- and it grew along the way: reporting in mid-July described a similar deal, at the same $1.5 billion valuation, as still being finalized at $75 million. Whatever changed in the roughly three months between "in talks" and closed added $15 million without moving the valuation.
The traction numbers behind the round are the company's own. Nous says Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times since February; The Wall Street Journal independently cites a close but not identical 22 million-plus download figure; and Nous estimates, by its own methodology, that Hermes now drives roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage. That last figure is unfalsifiable on its own terms: nobody publishes a verified total for "global AI token usage" for 2.5% to be a share of, which makes it a confidence signal aimed at investors more than a number anyone outside Nous could actually audit.
What the traction numbers actually measure
- 24M+ · Nous Research's own count, since Feb. 2026
- Hermes 'clones' claimed by the company
Includes: However Nous defines and counts a clone or download internally
Excludes: Independent verification of active, ongoing use - 22M+ · per WSJ reporting
- A separate download figure WSJ cites alongside Nous's own
- ~2.5% · Nous's own internal estimate
- Share of global AI token usage the company says Hermes drives
Excludes: Any named methodology or independent corroboration -- an estimate of its own footprint in a total nobody independently measures either - $1.5B · per WSJ, not disclosed by Nous
- Valuation implied by the $90M round
No revenue figure accompanied the funding announcement -- not what Hermes for Businesses costs, not what Nous currently earns, and not a single named enterprise customer. (A startup disclosing usage scale while staying silent on revenue is common at this stage, but it means the $1.5 billion figure is a bet on the 2.5%-of-tokens claim converting into paying seats, not evidence that it already has.)
The round lands inside a crowded agent market. Meta's Muse launched in September, Instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation for a restaurant-booking agent around the same time, and Nvidia -- also a Hermes investor -- separately built an enterprise platform on the rival open-source agent OpenClaw. Hermes is now the best-funded of the open, MIT-licensed options, but it is not the only one, and the enterprise features it just raised money to build are table stakes every competitor is racing to ship too.
- A credible, price-competitive open-source option with SSO and audit controls, instead of only closed, single-vendor agent platforms.
- The core model stays MIT-licensed and free, but the company's commercial focus now shifts toward the enterprise product it's paid to build.
- Faces a better-capitalized rival entering the same enterprise market it was first to target.
- A markup from the $1.5 billion valuation, on paper, assuming the round closed at the reported terms.
Hermes' core promise -- free, open, and able to run any model -- is also why its enterprise pivot is a genuine test rather than a formality. A hobbyist tool that adds an enterprise shell is a different claim than an enterprise platform that happens to also be free, and which one Nous actually becomes is a question the $90 million buys time to answer, not one it settles today.
- Nous Research raised $90 million in a Series B, valuing the company at $1.5 billion.
- The round funds 'Hermes for Businesses': private deployment, single sign-on, audit logs, cost visibility.
- Investors include Nvidia, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, and Y Combinator.
- Hermes itself stays free, open-source, and MIT-licensed -- the paid layer is the enterprise wrapper.
- Caveat: usage claims (24M+ clones, ~2.5% of global token volume) are Nous's own, with no independent count.