❯ Nous Research, maker of the open-source Hermes agent, closes a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation

Funding and a new product togetherNous Research confirmed on October 7 that it has closed a $90 million Series B at a post-money valuation of $1.5 billion. According to TechCrunch, Robot Ventures led the round with participation from Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital, bringing total funding to $158 million, and the company is launching Hermes for Businesses at the same time.

A free, open-source agentHermes Agent, developed by Nous Research, is an open-source AI agent under the MIT license, which permits free use. As Runtime Wire describes it, the agent has persistent memory and reusable skills, can search the web, execute code and run scheduled tasks, and connects to messaging platforms. TechCrunch says it has been downloaded more than 24 million times.

Where the revenue comes fromThe software is free, and the company charges for subscriptions and enterprise services: individual plans cost $20, $100 and $200 a month, alongside a free tier. As of mid-September, annualized revenue was about $36 million, and the company projects more than $100 million by year-end. Founded in 2023, the company is led by CEO Dillon Rolnick.

From individuals to enterprisesHermes users have so far been mainly developers and individuals. The business version adds team controls, shared skills, model selection, private or on-premises deployment, single sign-on and service-level agreements, so companies can deploy customized agents for multi-step workflows while keeping data in their own hands. The round is chiefly meant to fund that shift.

▮ SIGNALBeing free won the open-source agent its downloads, but what enterprises pay for is permissions, deployment and accountability, none of which lives in the code, and that is what Nous’s valuation is betting on.