Nous Research Raises 90 Million Dollars as Open-Source Hermes Agent Goes After Enterprise Money
Nous Research, the company behind the open-source Hermes agent, has raised a $90 million Series B at a reported $1.5 billion valuation. The money will go toward selling the free Hermes into businesses.
Three key facts
A heavyweight investor list. SiliconANGLE reported on October 7 that Robot Ventures led the round, joined by Nvidia, Samsung Electronics, Y Combinator and others. The $1.5 billion valuation comes from press reports; the company did not disclose it.
Hermes is an open-source agent that lives on your computer. Released in February under an open-source license, it ships as a desktop app that can work with your files, browse the web and run code in a Docker container. It calls third-party models such as Claude as well as Nous's own fine-tuned models, with a router that assigns each prompt by cost, speed and quality. The company says Hermes has passed 24 million downloads and, by its internal estimate, accounts for about 2.5% of the world's token consumption.
Revenue is growing, but still small. Citing The Wall Street Journal, the report says Nous had about $36 million in annualized revenue in mid-September and aims to top $100 million by year-end. Paid tiers include Hermes Cloud for consumers, plus Hermes Business and Hermes Enterprise for organizations.
WangDou's Take
Do the math: a $1.5 billion valuation on $36 million in annualized revenue is about 42 times. Twenty-four million downloads producing $36 million means each download brings in $1.50 a year — not even a cup of coffee.
The flashiest stat is "2.5% of the world's tokens." Much of that is paid for and burned on other companies' models. Bragging about it is like a taxi dispatcher boasting that it burns 2.5% of the city's gasoline. Burning more isn't earning more. Free open source, then charging enterprises for single sign-on and audit logs — the oldest trick in the book: the dumplings are free, the vinegar is billed by the dish.