Crypto Briefing • October 7th 2026, 4:49 PM
Nous Research raises $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation to scale Hermes Agent
Key Summary
Nous Research has secured $90 million in Series B funding at a $1.5 billion valuation to scale its open-source AI lab Hermes Agent. The funding will support the development of a business-focused version and a mobile app. Hermes Agent has been downloaded over 24 million times and accounts for 2.5% of global AI token inference usage.
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Overview
Nous Research has raised $90 million in a Series B round that values the open-source AI lab at $1.5 billion. The company announced the deal on October 7, 2026. The money is earmarked for Hermes Agent, the lab's autonomous AI assistant, along with a business-focused version and a planned mobile app.Background
Nous Research was founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium and Shivani Mitra. From the start, it positioned itself as an open-source AI lab.Hermes Agent
Hermes Agent launched in February 2026 under an MIT license, one of the most permissive open-source licenses available. Developers can use, modify and redistribute the code with very few strings attached.Market Impact
The agent is built to be autonomous and self-improving. It keeps persistent memory across sessions and generates its own reusable skills as it works. Users can run it locally on their own hardware or through hosted options. Hermes Agent has been downloaded or cloned more than 24 million times since launch. The agent also accounts for about 2.5% of global AI token inference usage.#AI#US#Crypto#OpenSource