Nous Research Secured $90 Million Funding

The developer behind Hermes will build an enterprise version of its AI agent after reaching a $1.5 billion valuation.

Updated on Oct. 7, 2026 in Artificial Intelligence

Interior rows of high-performance server hardware racks with blue ambient lighting in a clean, industrial data facility. — Nous Research raised $90 million in new funding to expand its Hermes AI agent into the business sector, reaching a $1.5 billion valuation. AI Illustration. Upload story photo >

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Nous Research has raised $90 million in new funding to expand its Hermes AI agent into the business sector. The company, which achieved a $1.5 billion valuation, is moving to commercialize an agent model that currently powers approximately 2.5% of global token usage.

Why it matters

The investment accelerates the shift toward specialized, enterprise-grade AI agents built on open-source foundations. By moving from a research-focused model to a commercial product, Nous Research intends to offer companies flexible deployment options based on specific performance and cost requirements.

The Hermes agent, which has been cloned more than 24 million times, currently accounts for 2.5% of global token usage. It currently operates across major platforms including macOS, Windows, Linux, Telegram, Slack, and WhatsApp.

The players

Nous Research

An AI research lab that focuses on fine-tuning open-source models and developing context-extension methods.

Nvidia

A dominant semiconductor manufacturer providing the high-performance GPU infrastructure required to train and run large-scale AI models.

The details

Nous Research fine-tunes Llama models, a series of large language models developed by Meta, to better adhere to specific user preferences. The team previously published YaRN (Yet another RoPE extension method), a technique that allows developers to extend the context windows—the amount of data a model can process at once—for existing open models. The upcoming business version of Hermes is expected to leverage these methods to prioritize specific user goals and hardware efficiency.

2023: Nous Research was formed.
February 2026: The Hermes AI agent was launched under the MIT license.
October 7, 2026: The $90 million funding round was reported.

The Tech Race

This development follows a trend of researchers leveraging the Llama model architecture to build highly specialized agentic workflows. It positions Nous Research to compete against established model providers by offering modular, enterprise-focused deployment options.

Business users will soon gain access to professional-grade Hermes agents capable of running across standard platforms like Slack and WhatsApp. These tools will allow organizations to select models tailored to specific operational goals rather than relying on one-size-fits-all solutions.

The takeaway

The move from a widely cloned open-source tool to an enterprise product marks a critical pivot in the lifecycle of AI agent development. Observers should track the release of the business version of Hermes to see how Nous Research handles commercial support compared to its open-source predecessor.