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Nous Research raises $90 million to bring its Hermes agent to businesses
IA en un minuto newsroom · Editor: Jon Elgezabal
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Nous Research has brought in $90 million from backers such as NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung and Y Combinator. With the round it is preparing Hermes for Businesses, an edition of its agent, which carries the MIT license, for companies that want to pick models, protect their privacy and control what they know. The Wall Street Journal reports that the deal values the company at $1.5 billion, a figure Nous has not confirmed.
Nous Research has closed a $90 million funding round to bring its AI agent to businesses.
According to a note by its chief executive, Dillon Rolnick, on the company website, the investors include NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures. The Wall Street Journal, which first broke the news, puts the valuation at $1.5 billion, as reported by The Next Web; Nous has not given that figure.
With the round and its new partners, Nous says it will build Hermes for Businesses, the business version of Hermes, its open-source agent. According to the company, it will let businesses choose the best models at the best prices for their goals, scale their AI use safely and privately, and keep control of their institutional knowledge. The note gives no launch date or price.
Nous, founded in 2023, released Hermes Agent under the MIT license in February. The agent remembers projects, writes reusable skills as it works and lets users choose where it runs and which models it uses. According to Nous, it has been cloned more than 24 million times and, by its own internal estimates, drives approximately 2.5% of all global token usage.
Why it matters · analysis and opinion
The round comes in a year when AI agents are drawing large sums, and it shows there is also room for an open-source offering that works with other companies' models. Nous is betting that businesses do not want to be tied to a single provider and would rather pick a model based on what each task costs. NVIDIA and Microsoft's M12 coming in suggests the big players also want a presence in that layer. Anyone testing agents is still missing the practical details: when the business version will arrive, how much it will cost and what support it will have. In the meantime, the open-source agent can already be downloaded, and it makes sense to check how it handles internal data before committing to it.
Official source: Nous Research · Written with the help of AI: how we make the news
