Nous Research, the startup behind the open-source AI agent Hermes, is finalizing a new funding round of at least $75 million led by Robot Ventures, with significant participation from USV, at a $1.5 billion valuation, according to sources familiar with the deal. The company declined to comment, and neither Robot Ventures nor USV responded to requests for comment.
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium and Shivani Mitra, Nous Research had previously raised $70 million from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital and Balaji Srinivasan. The company launched Hermes shortly after a similar AI agent, OpenClaw, gained viral attention, distinguishing its product with built-in skills such as web search, coding and image understanding, along with the ability to automatically develop new skills based on user activity.
Hermes allows users to automate tasks and interact with AI agents through platforms including Telegram and Discord, and has become widely adopted, amassing roughly 214,000 GitHub stars and nearly 40,000 forks. While the tool can run locally or on a virtual private server, Nous Research also offers a cloud-hosted version through paid subscription tiers. Sources said the new funding will support further expansion of Hermes’ product line and business model.
