Nous Research, the company behind the open-source Hermes agent, has closed a funding round at a valuation of $1.5 billion. According to insiders, the startup raised at least $75 million.
Three TechCrunch sources familiar with the deal report that investor interest was high. Nous Research declined to comment, and investors USV and Robot Ventures also did not respond. The company was founded in 2023 and had raised a total of $70 million prior to this round.
Response to OpenClaw
Hermes was launched a few weeks after the OpenClaw agent took the AI community by storm. OpenClaw runs locally on a PC and performs tasks for the user. The difference is that Hermes came with built-in “skills,” such as web search, coding, and image recognition. In addition, the agent automatically learns from use and builds new skills on its own, without manual intervention. The startup also released language models focused on code and mathematics.
Skills appear to have won out over OpenClaw-like functionality, just as integrations are gaining the upper hand over MCP, which briefly seemed poised to become the standard for AI connectivity.
Just like with OpenClaw, users can automate tasks and chat with the agents or receive messages via apps like Telegram and Discord. These types of tools are gaining popularity because the agents can run remotely and continuously. On top of that, Hermes is “model-agnostic,” meaning it’s compatible with all kinds of LLMs. This makes it an attractive alternative to tools like Claude Code and Codex, which are designed for Claude and GPT models, respectively.
Large following on GitHub
Hermes is open-source and widely embraced. On GitHub, the project has about 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks, according to TechCrunch. Developers can run Hermes on a desktop or a virtual private server. In addition, Nous Research offers a cloud-hosted version, available in paid plans ranging from $20 to $200 per month.
See also: Agents are now users, but is your architecture ready?