Breaking

Nous Research Seeks $75M at $1.5B Valuation Weeks After Series A, Powered by Open-Source Hermes Agent

July 13, 2026 at 20:07 EDT

AI Agents
Open Source
Funding & M&A

Nous Research, the open-source AI lab behind the fast-growing Hermes Agent, is raising at least $75 million at a $1.5 billion valuation—less than three months after closing a $50 million Series A that valued the company at $1 billion.

Open-Source AI · Nous Research

A $1.5B Valuation, Weeks After Hitting $1B

Nous Research is raising at least $75M at a $1.5 billion valuation — a 50% jump less than three months after closing its $50M Series A. The fuel: Hermes Agent, an MIT-licensed, self-evolving agent framework racing up developer charts.

$1.5B

New target valuation (up from $1B in April)

140K+

GitHub stars in under 3 months

50M+

Hermes model downloads to date

Valuation, two rounds in one quarter

+50% in a matter of weeks

$1.0B

Series A
April

$1.5B

New round
~3 months later

What makes Hermes Agent different

A self-evolving loop with persistent memory

Complete a task

→

Auto-generate reusable skill

→

Store in SQLite memory

→

Refine & reuse next time

40+

built-in tools

300+

supported models

$5 → cluster

runs on a VPS up to GPU clusters

Developer praise

Self-improving loop speeds long-running tasks
MIT license grants broad commercial freedom
Local execution, no telemetry — privacy-first
Native ties to Apple Notes, Reminders, iMessage

Early limitations

Gateway instability in earlier builds
Thin initial skill set
Later releases have worked to address both

The pace — two rounds in roughly a quarter — is a test case for whether community-driven, freely licensed agents can command the premiums usually reserved for closed, proprietary platforms.

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