Nous Research Secures $90M Series B at $1.5B Valuation, Launches Enterprise AI Agent Platform

Nous Research Closes $90 Million Series B Funding Round

Nous Research has successfully raised a $90 million funding round at a $1.5 billion valuation, confirming earlier reports and marking a significant milestone for the three-year-old startup1

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. Robot Ventures led the Series B funding round, with participation from major technology players including Nvidia, Samsung, Microsoft's M12, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, Menlo Ventures, and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. serves as a partner1

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. This latest injection brings Nous Research's total funding to $158 million since its formation in 20231

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Open-Source Hermes AI Agent Drives Massive Adoption

The open-source Hermes AI agent has achieved remarkable traction since its February release under the MIT open-source license. The agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and now drives approximately 2.5% of global AI token usage, according to Nous Research's internal estimates1

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. Chief executive Dillon Rolnick emphasized the company's efficiency, noting that "$90 million is modest in modern fundraising" and that "Nous has always delivered more with less"2

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. Hermes operates as a desktop app across macOS, Windows, and Linux platforms, and integrates with popular communication tools including Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp2

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. The agent can interact with user files, organize documents by category, access programs on the user's machine, use browsers to find web data, and run code in Docker containers3

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Enterprise Push with Hermes for Businesses

The capital from this $90 million funding round will primarily fuel Nous Research's expansion into the enterprise sector through "Hermes for Businesses," an enterprise-focused AI agent platform1

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. This new offering allows companies to deploy customized AI agents for business users that can handle multi-step workflows while maintaining data privacy and security1

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. The platform enables companies to choose models based on price and specific goals, keep their AI use private, and retain ownership of their company knowledge2

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. Administrators can set team-level token use limits, while end-users gain the ability to share agent customizations with colleagues3

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. Nous monetizes through three paid editions: Hermes Cloud for consumers who want quick agent launches without infrastructure setup, plus Hermes Business and Hermes Enterprise for organizational deployments3

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Technical Innovation Behind Hermes AI Agent

Under the hood, the Hermes AI agent leverages popular large language models such as Claude alongside Nous Research's own lineup of customized LLMs3

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. The company's latest collection, the Hermes 4 series, was fine-tuned using a training dataset comprising 5 million synthetically-generated records, with approximately two-thirds specifically created to enhance reasoning capabilities through a custom tool called DataForge3

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. A built-in router intelligently directs each user prompt to the most suitable LLM based on factors including inference costs, speed, and output quality3

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. The agent remembers projects, writes reusable skills as it works, and lets users choose which models it runs2

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. Users can enhance personalization features by connecting Hermes to external databases such as the agent-optimized RetainDB relational store, enabling the agent to retain preferences and project data across sessions3

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Strong Revenue Growth Signals Market Validation

Nous Research was generating approximately $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and expects to surpass $100 million before the end of 2026, according to The Wall Street Journal1

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. This rapid revenue trajectory demonstrates strong market validation for AI agents for business users. The company formed in 2023 with a mission to push back against what it views as a trend toward centralized, walled-off AI2

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. Nous initially focused on fine-tuning Meta's Llama models to follow individual user views and published YaRN, a method that gives open models longer context windows at lower cost2

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. The startup boasts several thousand open-source contributors who have helped shape the platform's development3

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. With personal AI agents drawing substantial investment this year—including Instinct's $1 billion raise at a $10 billion valuation—Nous Research's positioning in both consumer and enterprise markets appears strategically sound for capturing growing demand across multiple segments.