Nous raises $90 million and takes Hermes to businesses

Nous Research says it raised $90 million to build Hermes for Businesses, so companies can own and improve their own intelligence stacks.

In a note from CEO Dillon Rolnick, the company named NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator, and Menlo Ventures among the investors. Rolnick called $90 million modest by current fundraising standards and said the capital will go toward an open alternative that is safer because it can be audited, not because it is gate-kept.

TechCrunch reported on October 7, 2026, that the financing is a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Robot Ventures. It listed other participants as Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung, and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, and said the round brings total funding to $158 million. The company note includes Microsoft's M12 and Y Combinator, and it does not state a valuation, a series, or a lead. TechCrunch's account includes 1789 Capital and does not mention Microsoft's M12 or Y Combinator.

Hermes for Businesses

Nous said Hermes for Businesses will let companies cut spend by choosing models and prices, scale use safely and privately, and keep dominion over institutional knowledge. The note also calls the product Hermes Business and says it extends to companies a principle from the first Hermes release: the people using an AI system should control it. TechCrunch reported that the capital will fund customized agents for multi-step workflows while company data stays private and secure.

Underneath is Hermes Agent, which Nous said it released under an MIT license this past February. Users choose where it runs and which models it uses. It remembers projects, writes reusable skills, carries that knowledge across sessions, and gets better the more it is used. The company said Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times and, by its best internal estimates, drives approximately 2.5 percent of all global token usage. Thousands of contributors have helped build it, and thousands more have built on top of it. By many of the company's metrics, it is the most widely used open-source AI agent in the world.

What TechCrunch added

Citing The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch reported that Nous was at roughly $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and expects to pass $100 million before the end of 2026. Those revenue figures are not in the company note. Nous said it formed in 2023.

Read Rolnick's fundraise note for the raise, the investors the company names, and Hermes for Businesses. Then read TechCrunch's October 7 report for the Series B valuation, lead investor, total funding, and the revenue figures it attributes to the Journal.

Sources

• A Note on Our Fundraise
• Nous Research confirms it hit $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business users