Nous Research raises $90M for business version of open-source Hermes

Nous Research has raised $90 million to build Hermes for Businesses, a company-focused version of its open-source AI agent, TNW reported, citing a post from chief executive Dillon Rolnick. Hermes remembers projects, writes reusable skills as it works and lets users choose which AI models it runs. The new version is intended to preserve those capabilities while keeping a company’s AI use private and its knowledge under its control.

Nous released Hermes under an MIT license in February. The agent runs on macOS, Windows and Linux and works through Telegram, Slack and WhatsApp, TNW said, citing the company’s website. The same agent can therefore span desktop systems and messaging tools instead of being confined to one interface.

Hermes for Businesses is also meant to let customers choose models by price and goal. The design puts Hermes above the underlying models as the layer that organizes work. Nous is building the agent around those models, rather than asking customers to adopt another model from the company.

Nous said Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times since February. Its internal estimate puts the agent at about 2.5% of global token usage. Both are company-supplied figures, but the financing gives Nous capital to turn that open-source adoption into a product specifically for organizations.

That direction builds on work that began before Hermes. Founded in 2023, Nous initially fine-tuned Meta’s Llama models to follow individual users’ views and published YaRN, a method for giving open models longer context windows at lower cost, according to Rolnick’s account as relayed by TNW. The company has since moved from modifying models toward software that coordinates them for users.

TNW reported that Nvidia, Microsoft’s M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures participated. The Wall Street Journal reported that the round values Nous at $1.5 billion, according to TNW; the company itself did not disclose a valuation.