Nous Research, the open-source AI lab behind the Hermes agent, is finalizing a $75 million funding round led by Robot Ventures at a $1.5 billion valuation, TechCrunch reported Monday. Union Square Ventures (USV) is also participating, and the raise drew strong investor interest, according to unnamed inside sources.
The $1.5 billion price tag marks a sharp step up for the startup, which closed a $50 million Series A led by Paradigm just over a year ago—a deal that valued its yet‑to‑launch token at $1 billion, The Block reported in April 2025. Before the current round, Nous Research had raised roughly $70 million from backers including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital, and Balaji Srinivasan.
Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium, and Shivani Mitra, the project focuses on decentralized AI. Its flagship product, Hermes, is an agent that competes directly with OpenClaw, running locally on a user’s PC and executing tasks on their behalf. Released weeks after OpenClaw went viral, Hermes shipped with built‑in skills for web search, coding, and image understanding, and it can learn from usage to develop new capabilities.
Hermes has drawn a large developer following—roughly 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks on GitHub, per the report. Users can run it on a desktop, a virtual private server, or subscribe to a cloud‑hosted version priced from $20 to $200 per month. They can automate tasks and exchange messages with agents through apps like Telegram and Discord, as well as tools for running agents remotely around the clock.
The new capital will be directed toward expanding Hermes’ products and business model, TechCrunch sources said. A second report from the News Desk placed the news in a broader context, highlighting that the funding talks put decentralized AI back on crypto’s venture map. It noted that beyond token prices, infrastructure, regulation, and product layers matter, and this raise adds a concrete data point to the market’s thinking about AI.
The report cautioned that while the signal is useful, it does not guarantee adoption or immediate upside. Readers were urged to track follow‑up signals—developer feedback, exchange support, or liquidity data—before treating the update as a trend.
