Nous Research is finalising a new funding round led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to three sources familiar with the deal. The round includes significant backing from USV and other prominent investors, with the company raising at least $75 million.
Nous Research declined to comment on the terms. USV and Robot Ventures did not respond to requests for comment.
Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra founded the company in 2023. Prior to this latest round, Crunchbase records show the firm had raised a total of $70 million from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan.
How the tool works
Beyond developing Hermes, the company maintains a decentralised network that allows users to contribute hardware for compute and training. The firm has also released language models focused on coding and mathematics.
Weeks after OpenClaw’s agent went viral, Nous Research launched its own competitor, Hermes. OpenClaw is an agent that runs locally on a PC and performs tasks on behalf of the user. One key difference is that Hermes shipped with built-in skills, such as web search, coding, and image understanding. It was designed to automatically learn from user activity and build new skills without manual intervention.
Like OpenClaw, users can automate tasks with Hermes and interact with the agents via apps such as Telegram and Discord. These tools have gained popularity because they allow users to run AI agents remotely and around the clock.
Open-source and widely adopted, Hermes has amassed roughly 214,000 stars on GitHub and nearly 40,000 forks. Developers can run the software on a desktop or a virtual private server.
Nous Research also offers a cloud-hosted version. This option avoids the need for users to configure settings on their own machines. The hosted service is available via various paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 a month.
Sources indicate the new funding will help expand Hermes products and the business model further.
