Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source Hermes AI agent, is finalizing a new funding round that would value the company at $1.5 billion, according to sources with knowledge of the deal.
The company is raising at least $75 million in a round led by Robot Ventures with significant participation from Union Square Ventures, TechCrunch reports. The round was oversubscribed amid strong investor demand for open-source AI agent platforms.
From open source to unicorn
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra, Nous Research had raised $70 million prior to this round from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, and OSS Capital.
Its Hermes agent competes with OpenClaw’s offering, shipping with built-in skills for web search, coding, and image understanding. The platform has amassed roughly 214,000 GitHub stars and nearly 40,000 forks. Nous also offers a cloud-hosted version with paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month.
The new capital will help expand Hermes’ product suite and business model, according to sources. Neither Nous Research nor the lead investors commented on the deal.
