What happened
Nous Research has confirmed a $90 million Series B funding round, reaching a $1.5 billion valuation. The round, reported by TechCrunch AI, was led by Robot Ventures and included investors like Nvidia and Union Square Ventures. This brings the startup's total funding to $158 million.
The capital will support the launch of "Hermes for Businesses". This new enterprise offering allows companies to deploy customised AI agents for multi-step workflows. The open-source Hermes Agent has already been cloned over 24 million times.
How the room's reading it
The funding round is being read as strong validation for open-source AI agents moving into the enterprise. Developers see the success of Hermes Agent — a tool cloned 24 million times — as proof that a vibrant open community can compete with closed models. The involvement of investors like Nvidia and Union Square Ventures suggests serious belief that this model can win in business settings.
The consensus among builders is that Nous is following a classic open-core playbook. The challenge, as discussed in developer forums, will be converting a popular open-source tool into a secure, private enterprise product without alienating the original community.
Sailfish's take
We've seen this playbook before. The valuation isn't just for a popular open-source model — it's a bet on the team's ability to ship an enterprise-grade product that solves for privacy and multi-step workflows. The hard part isn't building the agent; it's building the secure, reliable infrastructure around it that big companies will actually pay for.
This move puts pressure on other open-source projects to find a commercialisation strategy beyond community support. For us, the interesting question isn't whether Hermes for Businesses will get traction. It's whether Nous can build a product compelling enough to pull enterprise teams away from the perceived safety of closed-source giants. We're watching, but we're not switching our agent stack just yet.