Nous Research, the company behind the open-source Hermes agent framework, has raised $90 million at a $1.5 billion valuation in a round led by Robot Ventures, with investors including Nvidia, Microsoft's M12, Samsung and Y Combinator, according to a Cyzone report; cumulative funding now stands at $158 million. Nous says Hermes, released under the MIT license, has been cloned more than 24 million times, and it estimates that roughly 2.5% of global AI token usage comes from Hermes-related applications. Tencent's Lightweight Cloud team built LightVela on the Hermes agent with WeChat access, and Xiaomi's MiMo was an important model source for Hermes on OpenRouter; Nous reported about $36 million in annualized revenue as of mid-September 2026 and expects to top $100 million by year-end.