Nous Research raises $90M and launches Hermes for Businesses, an enterprise version of its open-source agent

On October 7, 2026, Nous Research said it had raised $90 million to build Hermes for Businesses, a paid team version of Hermes Agent, its free, MIT-licensed AI agent. TechCrunch reported the round is a Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, confirming earlier reporting of the talks. The deal puts one of the most popular open-model agent projects onto the same path as other open-source companies: keep the core free and sell hosting, administration and support to companies.

This story is based on Nous Research's funding note and Hermes for Business product page, and on TechCrunch's and other outlets' reporting, checked October 12, 2026.

The short version

• Funding: $90 million, announced by CEO Dillon Rolnick on October 7. TechCrunch reports a Series B led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation, with $158 million raised in total.
• Product: Hermes for Businesses. A self-serve Business tier runs on Nous's infrastructure and is available now. An Enterprise tier runs on the customer's own infrastructure and is by inquiry.
• Price: not published.
• The "24 million" claim: Nous says Hermes "has been cloned over 24 million times." That's the company's number, and it doesn't say how it counts.

What did Nous Research announce?

Rolnick's note on the fundraise says: "Nous Research raised $90 million to create AI that serves the people." It names NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures "among others." The note doesn't give a valuation or say what the round is called.

TechCrunch filled in the rest on October 7:

• it's a Series B led by Robot Ventures, at a $1.5 billion valuation
• 1789 Capital also took part
• the round brings total funding to $158 million
• citing the Wall Street Journal, Nous had about $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September and expects to pass $100 million before the end of 2026

The note is mostly a mission statement. Rolnick writes that "the conversation is being dominated by fearmongering pleas for sweeping regulation," and argues for AI that is "open, competitive, 'safer' because of its auditability and not because of its gate-keepers."

What is Hermes for Businesses?

The note promises that Nous "will build and deliver Hermes for Businesses," which will let companies choose models by price and goal, keep their AI use private, and "own their institutional knowledge." Nous's product page, titled "Hermes for Business," is more concrete. It offers two tiers.

Last verified: October 12, 2026 (Nous Research, Hermes for Business page)

Both tiers include shared "skills" that any team member discovers and that then become available to the whole organization. A single harness works across every model on Nous's inference API or with the team's own provider keys, and there's spending visibility from one central balance. The agent reaches staff through Discord, Telegram, Slack and WhatsApp, as well as the terminal, desktop apps and the cloud. Running one agent harness across several models is a form of model routing, with the cost trade-offs that come with it.

What is Hermes Agent?

Hermes Agent is Nous's open-source, self-improving agent ("The agent that grows with you"). Its GitHub repository is MIT-licensed and showed about 250,000 stars and 53,000 forks on October 12. Tech Funding News reports it was released in February 2026. You can self-host it with one-line installers for Linux, macOS, WSL2 and Windows. On October 8, Nous said it was also available in the Microsoft Store. It is a general-purpose agent, not just a coding tool. Our explainer on what "agentic" really means covers how this kind of tool loop works.

Has Hermes really been "cloned 24 million times"?

That's what Nous says, and only Nous. Rolnick's note reads: "Today, Hermes has been cloned over 24 million times." It adds that Hermes "drives approximately 2.5% of all global token usage," based on "our best internal estimates." TechCrunch and others repeated both figures as the startup's estimates.

The note doesn't define "cloned." It could mean git clone operations, installs or something broader. GitHub shows clone traffic only to repository owners, and only for the last 14 days, so the figure can't be checked from outside. The Wall Street Journal reported a different metric: Dealroom and Digg summarize it as about 22.7 million (or "more than 22 million") downloads since February. Read both as adoption signals reported by the company, not audited counts. The 2.5% token-share estimate has no published method behind it.

Why it matters

Hermes for Businesses tests whether companies will pay for a hosted, managed version of an agent they could run free. Tech Funding News put it directly: "The harder test is whether firms that can run Hermes for free will pay Nous to run it for them." The pitch is administration (spend caps, SSO, shared skills) and data control, not a better model. Enterprise buyers should also weigh the security side of always-on agents that read chat messages and documents. Our piece on the case against unattended agents covers how sandboxing limits that risk.

What's confirmed, reported and uncertain

• Confirmed (Nous): the $90 million raise, the named investors, the Business and Enterprise tiers and their features, Business availability, and the MIT license.
• Reported (TechCrunch, WSJ): Series B label, $1.5 billion valuation, Robot Ventures as lead, 1789 Capital, $158 million total, and roughly $36 million annualized revenue.
• Company claims, unverified: "cloned over 24 million times" and about 2.5% of global token usage.
• Unknown: pricing for either tier, an Enterprise launch date, and the planned mobile app's timing.