Nous Research closes $90M Series B at $1.5B valuation, launches Hermes for Businesses
Nous Research, behind open-source Hermes Agent, closed a $90M Series B at $1.5B valuation on October 7, led by Robot Ventures with participation from Nvidia, Samsung, 1789 Capital, and others.
On October 7, 2026, at 1:13 PM Pacific Daylight Time, TechCrunch reporter Marina Temkin reported that Nous Research, the AI startup behind the open-source Hermes Agent, has officially confirmed completing a $90 million Series B round at a $1.5 billion valuation. Founded three years ago, Nous Research disclosed the details of the round in its blog, confirming earlier TechCrunch reports. The round was led by Robot Ventures, with participation from chip giant Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung, and 1789 Capital—where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. This new funding brings the three-year-old startup's total funding to $158 million, marking Nous Research's entry into unicorn territory in the highly competitive AI race.
On core technology, Nous Research's high valuation stems from the broad influence of its open-source Hermes Agent in the community. Loved by developers and individual users, the project has been cloned over 24 million times and drives about 2.5% of global AI token usage, according to the startup. This data shows that even though Nous Research has not yet entered the enterprise market mainstream, its penetration into the open-source ecosystem is already substantial. A 2.5% share of global token usage is a remarkable market position for a three-year-old startup, making it a key player in open-source LLMs.
On business strategy, Nous Research announced it will use the new funding to enter the enterprise market, launching a new product line called "Hermes for Businesses". This new line lets companies deploy customized AI agents that can handle multi-step workflows while keeping data private and secure. The core selling point of this transition is data privacy and security—a core need for enterprise customers adopting AI agents.
On revenue, per The Wall Street Journal, Nous Research's annualized revenue was about $36 million in mid-September 2026, and is expected to exceed $100 million before end of 2026. The leap from $36M to $100M means expected growth of nearly 3x in just a few months, showing strong momentum.
Nous Research's funding and enterprise market expansion comes at a time of intensifying competition in the AI agent space. Nous Research's path from open-source origins to enterprise market will face competition from large players like OpenAI as well as open-source platforms like Hugging Face. Overall, this funding and strategic transition elevates Nous Research from the traditional large-player vs open-source startup competitive landscape into the rhythm of AI enterprise application development.