Nous Research, the AI startup behind the open-source Hermes Agent, has raised $90 million in Series B funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, bringing total funding to $158 million since inception three years ago.
Robot Ventures led the round, joined by Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung, and 1789 Capital.
The capital will fund Nous Research's shift into enterprise with Hermes for Businesses, a product that lets companies deploy customized AI agents to handle multi-step workflows. The offering emphasizes data privacy and security—a table-stakes requirement for enterprises processing sensitive internal information through AI systems.
The company's open-source Hermes Agent has accumulated 24 million clones and drives approximately 2.5 percent of global AI token usage. Nous Research reported approximately $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026 and projects revenue exceeding $100 million by year-end.
The valuation hinges on converting developer adoption into enterprise SaaS revenue. Custom deployments for corporations generate the recurring, higher-margin revenue streams that justify AI valuations in the current market. The economics are straightforward: free open-source draws developer mindshare and generates defensible usage data; paid enterprise offerings convert that into predictable contract value.
Nvidia's participation is strategic. The chipmaker's stakes in agentic AI application companies lock in software demand for its GPU hardware. If Nous Research drives customer adoption of complex, multi-step agent workloads, that translates into sustained compute consumption on Nvidia infrastructure.
The enterprise agentic AI market is consolidating around privacy-first architectures. Corporations building internal agents need data localization and audit trails—not cloud-dependent black boxes. Nous Research's positioning on security and control reflects that structural demand.
