Nous Research raises $90M at $1.5B valuation, pushes into enterprise agents

Nous Research has raised a $90 million Series B that values the startup at $1.5 billion, confirming earlier reporting from TechCrunch. The round was led by Robot Ventures, with Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital also putting in money. 1789 Capital counts Donald Trump Jr. as a partner. The new funding brings Nous Research’s total raised to $158 million since the company started three years ago.

Nous Research builds Hermes Agent, an open source AI agent — software that can carry out multi-step tasks on its own rather than just answering questions. The startup says Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times and, by its own estimate, accounts for roughly 2.5% of all AI token usage worldwide. Token usage measures how much text AI models process, a rough proxy for how widely a model is actually run.

Moving into business accounts

The new capital will fund a push into companies, where Nous Research is launching what it calls Hermes for Businesses. The company describes the product as a way for businesses to deploy customized AI agents that handle multi-step workflows while keeping company data private and secure. Nous Research has not said which companies are using the product or detailed pricing.

The startup’s growth has outpaced that description. The Wall Street Journal reported that Nous Research was generating roughly $36 million in annualized revenue by mid-September 2026, and that the company expects to cross $100 million in annualized revenue before the end of the year. Those figures come from the Journal’s reporting; Nous Research has not published detailed financials of its own.

The round adds Nous Research to a growing list of AI agent startups drawing large valuations on the strength of developer adoption rather than confirmed enterprise contracts. Robot Ventures, Nvidia, Samsung and the other investors are betting that a tool already popular with individual developers can be repackaged and sold to companies at a markup. The presence of 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, adds a notable name to the investor list, though the firm’s stake size was not disclosed.

What happens next depends on whether Hermes for Businesses converts the open source tool’s developer popularity into paying enterprise contracts. Nous Research has told the Journal it expects annualized revenue to pass $100 million by the end of 2026, up from about $36 million in mid-September. That revenue figure, not the $1.5 billion valuation, is the number to watch.