Nous Research in Talks for $1.5B Valuation in New Funding Round
▼ Summary
– Nous Research is finalizing a funding round led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation, raising at least $75 million less than three months after its $50 million Series A.
– The startup was founded in 2023 and had raised $70 million total from investors including Paradigm and Robot Ventures prior to this round.
– Nous Research develops the open-source Hermes agent, which ships with built-in skills like web search and coding, and can learn from usage without intervention.
– Hermes has a massive GitHub following with 214,000 stars and 40,000 forks, and is available both locally and as a cloud-hosted service with paid tiers from $20 to $200 a month.
– The new funding will be used to expand Hermes products and the company’s business model.
Nous Research, the creator of the open-source Hermes agent, is closing in on a new funding round that could value the company at $1.5 billion. According to three sources familiar with the deal, the round is being led by Robot Ventures, with substantial participation from USV and other notable investors. The startup is looking to raise at least $75 million, and it has drawn overwhelming interest from the investment community. This latest capital injection follows closely on the heels of a $50 million Series A announced less than three months ago.
Nous Research declined to comment for this story. USV and Robot Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra, the company had already secured $70 million in total funding prior to this round. Previous backers include Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan, as reported by Crunchbase.
Beyond developing the Hermes agent, Nous Research operates a decentralized network that allows users to contribute hardware for compute and training purposes. The company has also released language models specifically optimized for coding and mathematics.
The release of Hermes came just weeks after OpenClaw’s agent went viral. OpenClaw runs locally on a PC and can perform tasks on behalf of users. What sets Hermes apart is its inclusion of built-in “skills” , such as web search, coding, and image understanding , right out of the box. Additionally, Hermes is designed to automatically learn from user interactions and develop new skills without any manual intervention.
Like OpenClaw, Hermes enables users to automate tasks, chat with agents, or receive messages via apps like Telegram and Discord. These tools have surged in popularity because they allow users to run AI agents remotely and continuously.
As an open-source project, Hermes has gained a massive following on GitHub, accumulating roughly 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks. Developers can run Hermes on a desktop or a virtual private server.
For those who prefer a simpler setup, Nous Research also offers a cloud-hosted version of Hermes. This option is available through paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month, making it more accessible for users who want to avoid configuring their own machines.
Sources indicate that the new funding will be used to expand Hermes products and refine the company’s business model further.
(Source: TechCrunch)