Nous Research, the open-source lab behind the Hermes Agent, has confirmed a Series B round to build an enterprise edition of its agent. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 7 that the round totals $90 million at a $1.5 billion valuation; Nous confirmed the Series B itself the same day, but its announcement does not state the amount or valuation, so those figures rest on the Journal's reporting.

What the money is for

The funds are earmarked for Hermes for Businesses, a managed offering aimed at companies. Reported features include single sign-on, per-employee permissions, workspace isolation, audit logs of what the agent did and when, cost management, and integrations with Slack and Teams. Nous says Hermes itself will remain open source, and coverage says customers will be able to choose which models the agent runs on. The company also plans a mobile app.

Investors named in Nous's announcement, according to several outlets, include Nvidia, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures. Reports disagree on whether a single lead investor was named, so we are not attributing the round to one.

Traction claims

Nous reports annualized revenue of roughly $36 million as of mid-September and expects it to pass $100 million by the end of the year. It also says Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times; other outlets cite a lower download figure of about 22.7 million. These are company-supplied numbers and have not been independently verified.

Why it matters

The round follows reports in July that Nous was in talks to raise at the same $1.5 billion valuation. It is a notable bet that an open-source, model-agnostic agent can win paying enterprise customers against closed offerings from the large labs, with governance features such as audit trails and access control as the selling point. Whether Hermes for Businesses can turn community adoption into the revenue Nous projects remains to be seen, and the company has not published pricing for the enterprise tier.