Nous Research raises at least $75 million at $1.5 billion valuation
The Hermes developer is nearing a funding round led by Robot Ventures, with Union Square Ventures participating, at a valuation 50% above its prior $1 billion Series A level.
Nous Research is nearing a funding round of at least $75 million that would value the open-source AI agent startup at $1.5 billion, with Robot Ventures leading and Union Square Ventures participating. The valuation is 50% above the $1 billion level from its $50 million Series A led by Paradigm about a year ago. Founded in 2023, the company builds Hermes, an AI agent with web search, coding and image-understanding features that can run on desktops and virtual private servers or through a cloud-hosted service priced from $20 to $200 a month. Hermes also connects to Telegram and Discord for remote task execution. Nous had previously raised about $70 million from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital and Balaji Srinivasan. The planned financing highlights strong investor demand for AI agent infrastructure and is expected to fund further expansion of Hermes and the company’s business model.
- open-source: Software whose source code is publicly available for others to use, inspect and modify.
- AI agent: Software that can perform tasks, use tools and make limited decisions on a user’s behalf.
- valuation: An estimate of what a company is worth, often set during a fundraising round.