Nous Research raises $90m for its open-source AI agent

Nous Research has raised $90m to build Hermes for Businesses, chief executive Dillon Rolnick confirmed in a fundraising note. Axios Pro Rata’s 7 October 2026 report puts the company’s valuation at $1.5bn.

The company develops Hermes Agent, an open-source AI assistant that carries saved memories and reusable skills across tasks. Nous says the agent has been cloned more than 24 million times since its February release, a company-reported count of software copies.

What does the $90m round fund?

Rolnick says the money will help Nous build and deliver Hermes for Businesses, extending its agent to companies that want control over their models and intelligence systems. Robot Ventures led the round, according to Axios.

Nous’s own note names NVIDIA, Microsoft’s M12, Samsung, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures, alongside Robot Ventures, among the investors. The $90m raised and the reported $1.5bn valuation describe the fundraising and the value assigned to the company in the deal.

Source: Axios Pro Rata, 7 October 2026.

Hermes remembers work between sessions

Hermes Agent saves conversations, memories and skills, allowing a user to return to earlier work in a later session. Nous’s product site describes an assistant that learns about projects and turns experience into reusable skills.

The agent can be used through its desktop app or a terminal, and connected to messaging services including Telegram, Discord, Slack and WhatsApp. Its tools include web browsing, search and scheduled tasks.

An AI agent combines a language model with tools that take actions. Hermes provides that working layer around a selected model: it can retain context, call tools and organise follow-on work. Users can choose their model provider, while Nous offers its own portal for access to models and tools.

The agent is free and open source

Hermes Agent is released under the MIT licence, with its source code available on GitHub. Developers can inspect, modify and run the software under that licence.

The official product site separates the free agent from the costs of the model provider and optional hosted services. A local installation uses the chosen provider’s pricing; Nous also offers paid portal plans with model and tool credits, plus optional cloud hosting.

That gives Nous a commercial path alongside the open-source project: people can run Hermes themselves, or pay for the models, tools and hosting they choose to use with it. The new financing supports the company behind that combination.