Key facts
- Nous Research is in discussions for a new funding round.
- The startup is seeking to raise at least $75 million.
- The company is negotiating a valuation of $1.5 billion.
- Robot Ventures is expected to lead the funding round.
- USV is also participating significantly in the round.
- This follows a $50 million Series A announced less than three months ago.
Nous Research, the company behind the open-source AI agent Hermes, is reportedly in the final stages of securing new funding at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The round, expected to be at least $75 million, is being led by Robot Ventures with significant participation from USV and other investors. This comes shortly after Nous Research announced a $50 million Series A round less than three months prior.
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra, Nous Research has previously raised $70 million. In addition to developing Hermes, the company operates a decentralized network for compute and training hardware and has released specialized language models for coding and math.
Hermes, released after Openclaw's agent gained popularity, is an AI agent designed to run locally or on a server. It distinguishes itself with built-in skills like web search, coding, and image understanding, and is engineered to learn and develop new skills autonomously. Users can interact with Hermes via chat or receive messages through platforms like Telegram and Discord, enabling around-the-clock task automation.
The open-source nature of Hermes has led to widespread adoption, with the project accumulating approximately 214,000 stars and 40,000 forks on GitHub. Nous Research also provides a user-friendly, cloud-hosted version of Hermes, available through various paid subscription tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month.
Sources indicate that the proceeds from this new funding round will be allocated to further expand Hermes' product offerings and its business model.