Open-source Hermes Agent has been downloaded 22.7 million times; Nous Research secures $90 million in funding for its enterprise-focused business.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: Nous Research completes a $90 million Series B funding round, with valuation hitting $1.5 billion. Robot Ventures led the round, and participants include Nvidia, Microsoft M12, Samsung, USV, etc. The company has raised approximately $158 million in total to date. The new capital will primarily be used to bring Hermes – an open-source agent that has gone viral among developers this year – to the enterprise market. Since its launch in February, Hermes has been downloaded 22.7 million times. Data from OpenRouter shows its usage has surpassed OpenClaw. As of mid-September, Nous’ annualized revenue stood at around $36 million, and the company projects it will exceed $100 million later this year. Nous does not offer another closed agent for enterprises. Hermes remains free and open-source under the MIT license, allowing enterprises to select their own models or deploy on their own cloud or on-premises servers. Nous adds enterprise-focused features on top, including SSO, employee access permissions, workspace isolation, auditing, cost management, and integrations with Slack and Microsoft Teams. The first enterprise deployments have already begun. Its business model is now clear: Hermes is free and open-source, while Nous generates revenue from models, tools, cloud hosting, and enterprise management services. An open-source agent originally targeted at developers has already achieved $36 million in annualized revenue, and now it aims to validate whether this model can scale in the enterprise space.