Nous Research confirms $90M Series B at $1.5B valuation and launches Hermes for Businesses

What happened

Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes agent, has confirmed a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation. TechCrunch, which reported the confirmation, notes that the numbers match its earlier coverage of the deal. The round brings total funding for the three-year-old company to $158 million.

Who put money in

Robot Ventures led the financing. Other backers named by TechCrunch include Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital, the investment firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner. The spread of investors, from a major chipmaker to long-standing venture funds to a politically connected firm, reflects how broad the appetite for open AI platforms has become.

A move into the enterprise

The new capital is aimed at taking Nous beyond its base among developers and individual users. The company is introducing "Hermes for Businesses," a product that lets organizations deploy AI agents tailored to their needs. According to TechCrunch, these agents are built to carry out multi-step workflows while keeping customer data private and secure, a direct answer to the data-handling concerns that have slowed corporate uptake of consumer-grade AI tools.

Adoption and revenue behind the valuation

The open-source Hermes agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and, by the startup's own estimates, accounts for roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage. That developer traction is starting to convert into revenue. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nous reached about $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and expects to pass $100 million before the year is out. If that forecast holds, the company would nearly triple its run rate during the final stretch of the year alone.

Why it matters

A $1.5 billion valuation for a three-year-old open-source AI lab is a signal that open-source AI can sustain a serious business rather than only a research community. The Hermes adoption numbers, tens of millions of clones and a measurable slice of worldwide token traffic, give Nous a distribution footprint that larger incumbents cannot easily dismiss, and "Hermes for Businesses" is the attempt to turn that reach into durable enterprise income.

The launch also arrives in a market where buyers want agentic AI but remain cautious about how their data is handled. An offering positioned around privacy and secure deployment speaks directly to that hesitation. And the revenue projection reported by the Wall Street Journal, if achieved, would place Nous among the faster-scaling AI companies by run rate. The participation of Nvidia and Samsung, meanwhile, points to strategic interest from the hardware layer in agent software that customers can run on their own terms.