Nous Research raises $90M and launches Hermes for Businesses

Nous Research has confirmed a $90 million Series B round at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to TechCrunch. The funding comes as the three-year-old startup moves its open source Hermes Agent from developer adoption toward business users with a new enterprise product.

The announcement matters because AI agents are shifting from experiments into tools that companies want to plug into real workflows. For teams watching automation software, Nous is positioning Hermes as another option for multi-step work that needs customization and tighter data controls.

What Nous announced

Nous Research, best known for developing the open source Hermes Agent, raised the Series B round led by Robot Ventures. TechCrunch reports that other participants included Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung, and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner.

The new round brings Nous Research’s total funding to $158 million, according to the report. It also confirms earlier TechCrunch reporting that the startup had reached a $1.5 billion valuation.

Nous is using the capital to expand into enterprise software with Hermes for Businesses. The company says the business version will let organizations deploy customized AI agents for multi-step workflows while keeping company data private and secure.

Why Hermes already had momentum

Before this enterprise push, Hermes Agent had already found an audience among developers and individual users. According to Nous Research’s estimates cited by TechCrunch, the open source agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and accounts for about 2.5% of global AI token usage.

Those figures are important because enterprise buyers often look for signs that a tool has a real developer base, not just a polished sales pitch. Open source traction can also help a product spread through technical teams before it is bought centrally by a company.

The challenge is that business adoption is different from developer adoption. Companies usually need security assurances, administrative controls, customization, and predictable deployment processes before they allow agents to touch sensitive workflows. Nous is now explicitly aiming at that buyer.

What this means for business automation buyers

For Emonarc readers, the practical question is not only whether Hermes is technically capable, but where it fits beside the automation tools many small businesses already use.

Workflow platforms such as Zapier, Make, and n8n are commonly used to connect apps and move data between services. AI agents aim at a different layer of automation: carrying out more flexible, multi-step tasks that may require reasoning across a workflow rather than simply triggering a fixed sequence.

That distinction matters for marketers, freelancers, and small teams. If a process is stable and rule-based, a conventional automation platform may still be the clearer option. If the work involves interpreting context, deciding between steps, or adapting to messy inputs, agent-based systems may become more relevant.

Nous has not disclosed pricing, packaging, or availability details in the source report, so businesses should not assume Hermes for Businesses is ready for every team or budget. The safest takeaway is that Nous is moving from open source popularity toward enterprise sales, where privacy and secure deployment are central parts of the pitch.

The broader market is also getting more crowded. Microsoft has been adding agent-related features around Windows and AI PCs, as covered in our report on Nvidia-powered Surface AI PCs and Windows 11 agent features. OpenAI is also adding tools for structured task decisions, including its Decisions API. Nous now joins that larger conversation from an open source agent starting point.

Revenue and the road ahead

TechCrunch also cited reporting from The Wall Street Journal on Nous Research’s growth. According to that report, the company was at roughly $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and expects to exceed $100 million before the end of 2026.

That revenue trajectory, if achieved, would give Nous more room to hire, support enterprise deployments, and compete for larger customers. But the business product will need to prove that it can turn open source enthusiasm into dependable company-wide use.

For now, the key development is clear: Nous Research has new funding, a confirmed unicorn valuation, and a business-focused version of Hermes Agent. The next test is whether companies trust those agents with real operational work, not just demos and developer experiments.