Nous Research raises $90M Series B at $1.5B valuation

By Splitfeed EditorialLast updated Oct 8, 2026, 06:50 UTC

On October 7, 2026, Nous Research closed a $90 million Series B round that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Nvidia and Samsung are named as backers. The funding announcement arrived alongside the commercial launch of Hermes, an AI agent the company had previously offered as an open-source project. According to Derek Ross, Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times since its February release, a figure Nous Research appears to be using as evidence of demand ahead of its enterprise push.

The round matters because it formalises a strategic shift. Nous Research built its reputation inside the open-source AI community, releasing models and tools that developers could download and modify freely. Turning that reputation into a subscription or services business aimed at corporate buyers is a meaningfully different challenge. The company has not disclosed revenue figures or named any enterprise customers, which makes it difficult to judge whether the community adoption translates into paying contracts. The valuation also arrives at a moment when AI investment is still moving fast, so the $1.5 billion figure reflects investor appetite as much as demonstrated commercial traction.

The pro-AI camp reads the deal as confirmation that open-source momentum can convert into enterprise revenue. Ryan Daws framed it as a shift from open-weights research into production business automation, and Cryptoverse News described the broader pattern as open-source momentum transitioning into enterprise revenue. The anti-AI camp has not published reactions to this story; that camp would typically question whether the underlying technology justifies the valuation and whether commercial deployment introduces risks that community use does not. The middle ground is more specific in its skepticism. GRIM noted that the shift from a research era to an implementation era may be reaching a point of no return, while rtfclmgzn pointed out that no revenue and no named customers have been disclosed. Zubiqo added that pitching data control is not a guaranteed win when trying to monetize a free tool with risk-averse buyers who typically prefer managed services.

The argument will sharpen when Nous Research discloses its first named enterprise customers or announces revenue milestones. Any signal about whether Hermes is winning contracts against established managed-service competitors would give concrete grounding to what is currently a debate about potential.