Nous Research hits $1.5 billion valuation and moves Hermes toward business users

The new funding gives Nous more room to sell its open-source Hermes agent into business settings after heavy use of the model.

Nous Research has closed a $90 million Series B at a $1.5 billion valuation, and the new money is aimed at moving its open-source Hermes agent deeper into business use. The round was led by Robot Ventures and included Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Samsung and 1789 Capital, bringing total funding to $158 million. The company says Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times and accounts for about 2.5% of global AI token usage, which helps explain why it is now packaging the product as “Hermes for Businesses.” On the other side of the story, Arena raised a $200 million Series B at a $3.1 billion valuation, nearly doubling its valuation in about 10 months after a $150 million Series A in January. Arena also said it had reached $100 million in annualized run-rate revenue in June and has added an alignment ranking to its AI leaderboard alongside its existing evaluation products.