Nous Research, the company behind the open-source Hermes agent, is nearing completion of a new funding round led by Robot Ventures. This round includes significant participation from Union Square Ventures (USV) and other major investors, valuing the company at $1.5 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal. The startup is raising at least $75 million and has attracted substantial interest from investors.
Founders and Previous Funding
Nous Research was founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra. Before this current funding round, the company had raised a total of $70 million from investors such as Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan, as reported by Crunchbase. The company declined to comment on the current funding round, and both USV and Robot Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Hermes vs. Competitors
The release of Hermes came shortly after Openclaw's agent gained popularity. While similar in function, Hermes differentiates itself by shipping with built-in skills like web search, coding, and image understanding. Additionally, Hermes is designed to learn and expand its capabilities automatically based on user interaction, without needing manual updates. Besides the Hermes agent, Nous Research has also launched language models tailored for coding and mathematics.
Hermes Adoption and Offerings
Hermes has gained significant traction on GitHub, amassing about 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks, reflecting its popularity among developers. Users can deploy Hermes on desktops or virtual private servers. For those seeking a more user-friendly option, Nous Research provides a cloud-hosted version of Hermes, which is available in various paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month.
Future Expansion Plans
According to insiders, the current round of funding is aimed at expanding Hermes' product line and business model. The company plans to leverage the new capital to enhance its offerings and extend its reach in the AI agent market.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/13/hermes-agent-maker-nous-research-in-talks-for-new-funding-at-1-5b-valuation/
