source: techcrunch ai: hermes agent maker nous research in talks for new funding at $1.5b valuation
level: business
nous research, the startup behind the open-source hermes agent, is in talks to raise at least $75 million in a round led by robot ventures with participation from usv and other investors. the deal would value the company at $1.5 billion, according to sources. nous research declined to comment, and the investors did not respond to requests for comment. the company was founded in 2023 and had previously raised $70 million from backers including paradigm, robot ventures, and north island ventures.
hermes is an ai agent that runs locally on a pc and can perform tasks like web search, coding, and image understanding. it ships with built-in skills and can learn from user interactions to develop new skills automatically. users can interact with hermes through chat apps like telegram and discord, and it can run continuously on remote servers. the agent has gained significant traction on github, with roughly 214,000 stars and 40,000 forks. nous research also offers a cloud-hosted version with paid tiers ranging from $20 to $200 per month.
the new funding is intended to expand hermes' product offerings and business model. the agent competes with similar tools like openclaw, which also allows users to automate tasks with locally running ai. the growing popularity of such agents reflects a trend toward user-controlled ai that operates around the clock without relying on centralized cloud services. nous research has also released language models focused on coding and math, broadening its open-source portfolio.
why it matters: the funding signals strong investor confidence in open-source ai agents that run locally, offering data scientists and developers more control and customization compared to cloud-only alternatives.
source: techcrunch ai: hermes agent maker nous research in talks for new funding at $1.5b valuation