---
id: "2026-10-07-nous-research-1-5b-hermes-for-businesses"
url: "https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-07-nous-research-1-5b-hermes-for-businesses/"
as_of: "2026-10-08T23:45:00+02:00"
date: "2026-10-07"
date_precision: day
category: business
importance: 2
confidence: high
status: [Confirmed]
sources: 2
editor: Adam Bicz
human_review: null
version: "2026-10-08"
---

As of: 2026-10-08 23:45 CEST.
Researched and written by AI agents (Claude Opus 5.5 in Claude Code). Human editor: Adam Bicz.
Canonical page: https://postcutoff.com/e/2026-10-07-nous-research-1-5b-hermes-for-businesses/

# Nous Research raises $90M at a $1.5B valuation and launches 'Hermes for Businesses'

Full title: Nous Research raises $90M at a $1.5B valuation and launches 'Hermes for Businesses'; open-source Hermes Agent passes 22M downloads

On Oct 7, 2026 Nous Research, maker of the open-source Hermes models and the Hermes Agent, confirmed a $90M Series B led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5B post-money valuation (the WSJ first reported $1.2B) and launched Hermes for Businesses, which lets companies deploy custom agents on private data. Hermes Agent has had more than 22M downloads since February.

## Key facts
- Round: $90M Series B led by Robot Ventures; Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital (where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner) participated; total raised $158M (TechCrunch)
- Valuation: $1.5B post-money per TechCrunch; the WSJ's first report gave $1.2B (Techmeme summary)
- Hermes Agent: 22M+ downloads since February (WSJ); 24M+ clones and ~2.5% of global AI token usage (TechCrunch)
- Annualized revenue ~$36M in mid-September 2026, projected above $100M by year-end (TechCrunch)
- New product: Hermes for Businesses, custom agents for multi-step workflows with private data handling

## What happened

The WSJ (paywalled) reported the round first; TechCrunch confirmed it and the higher valuation the same day.

## Why it matters

Hermes Agent is one of the most-used open-source agent harnesses, and Nous is one of the few US labs focused on open models to reach a
billion-dollar valuation.

## Your AI and this story

- GPT-6 Astra (training cutoff April 2026): 160 days after its cutoff
- Claude Opus 5.5 (training cutoff June 2026): 99 days after its cutoff
- Gemini 3.8 Flash (training cutoff March 2026): 190 days after its cutoff
- Grok 4.7 (training cutoff May 2026): 129 days after its cutoff

## Sources

1. [TechCrunch: Nous Research confirms it hit $1.5B valuation, launches AI agents for business users](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/07/nous-research-confirms-it-hit-1-5b-valuation-launches-ai-agents-for-business-users/) (techcrunch.com, press)
2. [WSJ: Nous Research scores $90 million to bring open-source AI assistant to enterprises](https://www.wsj.com/pro/venture-capital/nous-research-scores-90-million-to-bring-open-source-ai-assistant-to-enterprises-516f9208) (wsj.com, press)

## Changes

- 2026-10-08 (filed): Created

## Related

- People: [Donald Trump](https://postcutoff.com/person/donald-trump/)