Nous Research's open-source agent Hermes has landed funding that changes how it can play. On October 7, 2026, Nous Research announced a $90 million Series B, and The Wall Street Journal reported a $1.5 billion valuation for the round. Robot Ventures led the financing; investors named by the company include Nvidia, Microsoft's M12, Samsung Next, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures. Nous had previously raised roughly $70 million, taking its total to about $160 million.
What carries a valuation like this
Hermes is not a model but an open-source agent: it can browse the web, edit files and write code, carries persistent memory, and can distill reusable skills from how people use it. It runs on a user's own computer or server, while Nous also offers hosted model access, tools and cloud hosting through Nous Portal. According to the Journal, Hermes has been downloaded more than 22.7 million times since its February launch. For investors, the appeal is not any single release but the distribution already in place: once enough developers adopt an open-source agent in their personal setups, enterprise buyers face not just a sales pitch but habits their own staff have already formed.
The software is free, so what does the enterprise version sell
That is the proposition this round has to prove. Hermes itself is open source and self-hostable, so companies will not pay for the same code twice; what Nous can sell sits around the code: enterprise deployment, security and administration inside private environments, team-level controls and operations, and hosted services for those who do not want to run servers themselves. The company plans to put the money toward taking Hermes to business customers and building a mobile app. Management expects annualized revenue to exceed $100 million by year-end, up from about $36 million in mid-September. That is a company forecast, not realized results, and whether it lands depends on actual enterprise signings.
What it means for teams still deciding
For teams choosing an agent, the appeal of the Hermes route is control: it can be self-hosted, its code can be inspected, and memory and skills stay in your own hands rather than under a single vendor's subscription policy. The trade-offs are just as clear: self-hosting means deployment, security and failures are yours to handle, the enterprise management layer is still being built, and the mobile app is not out yet. The sounder way to judge it is to run it inside a real workflow for a few weeks and watch skill retention and stability, rather than going by download counts and valuation. Nous is currently the front-running test of whether an open-source agent can become a large business, and the $90 million buys time to find out.
