Nous Research Hermes for Businesses
An official fundraise note confirming a $90 million raise and extending the company's user-in-control principle into Hermes for Businesses
Tool Overview
Details, capabilities and usage guidance
Features
- ✓ Built for companies: Nous says the business edition lets companies of every size own their own intelligence stack, extending Hermes' long-standing principle that the people using an AI system should control it
- ✓ Spend control: Nous says it will cut spend by letting you choose the best models at the best prices for your goals, and give you the heuristics to make those decisions
- ✓ Safe, private scale: Nous says it will let a company's AI use scale safely and privately
- ✓ Bottom-up intelligence: Nous says it helps build a corpus of intelligence bottoms-up by enabling the talent a company already has
- ✓ Ownership of institutional knowledge: Nous says it gives companies dominion over their institutional knowledge
How to Use
- Read Nous Research's official post A Note on Our Fundraise to confirm the raise, the investors and the wording of the business plan
- Understand the existing Hermes Agent: Nous says it shipped under an MIT license this past February, that users choose where it runs and which models it uses, and that it remembers projects and writes reusable skills as it works
- Map your organisation's model costs, data boundaries and institutional-knowledge needs against the official description of Hermes for Businesses
- Note that the announcement gives no release date or pricing for the business edition, so plan any pilot around official follow-up posts
FAQ
What is Hermes for Businesses?
It is the direction announced in Nous Research's official fundraise note: bringing the open-source Hermes Agent to companies. Nous says it will let businesses own their own intelligence stacks, choose the best models at the best prices for their goals, scale AI use safely and privately, build a corpus of intelligence bottoms-up, and hold dominion over their institutional knowledge.
How big was the raise and at what valuation?
The official post says Nous raised $90 million. TechCrunch reported on 7 October 2026 that this was at a $1.5 billion valuation. Investors named in the official note include NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung, Robot Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Y Combinator and Menlo Ventures.
How widely used is Hermes Agent today?
The official post says Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times and, by Nous' best internal estimate, drives approximately 2.5% of all global token usage, with thousands of contributors; it says Hermes Agent was released under an MIT license this past February. These are Nous' own figures and have not been independently verified.
How does it differ from the Hermes Agent available now?
Nous says the individual version gives users control over where Hermes Agent runs and which models it uses, that it remembers projects, writes reusable skills as it works and carries that knowledge across sessions. The business edition extends that same principle to companies.
Can I use it today?
The note is a directional announcement: Nous says it will build and deliver Hermes for Businesses, but gives no timeline, pricing or deployment details. Teams that want to evaluate now should start with the open-source Hermes Agent and watch for official follow-ups.
What should companies check before adopting?
The promise centres on model choice, cost control, privacy and ownership of institutional knowledge, all of which need real-world verification: define data boundaries and permission models first, measure the actual cost of multi-model routing, and turn knowledge-stays-inside claims into an auditable technical design.