Nous Research

Nous Research is an open-source artificial intelligence company that trains and publishes language models and builds infrastructure for coordinating distributed model training. Its stated primary research areas are model architecture, data synthesis, fine-tuning and reasoning, and its stated mission is to advance human rights and freedoms by creating and proliferating open source language models and supporting their unrestricted availability and use. The company describes itself as a frontier open source AI company and a participant in the American open source AI movement.

Its best-known products are the Hermes agent, described as an open-source self-improving AI agent with a built-in learning loop, and DisTrO, an approach intended to let GPUs distributed across the internet collaborate on training generative AI models. Press coverage also references a Hermes model series, coding- and math-focused language models, and Nous Portal and Hermes Cloud as commercial product surfaces. Third-party profiles additionally mention Nous Chat and the Nous Psyche decentralized training platform, though these descriptions are aggregated and partly inconsistent with other sources.

Hermes competes directly with OpenClaw, a locally run PC agent; Nous released Hermes weeks after OpenClaw's agent went viral. Hermes ships with built-in "skills" such as web search, coding and image understanding, and is designed to learn from user activity and generate additional skills without manual intervention. Users can run it on a desktop or a virtual private server, or use a cloud-hosted version, and can interact with agents through apps including Telegram and Discord.

Founding story

Founded in 2023. TechCrunch and The Block name Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium and Shivani Mitra as founders. A third-party aggregator describes the group as forming organically from a collective of researchers, developers and AI enthusiasts who connected through Discord and Reddit rather than as a conventionally founded company; the same source elsewhere lists only Quesnelle and Malhotra as co-founders, so founder details vary by source.

Business model

Nous Research publishes open-source models and agent software while monetizing hosted and enterprise offerings. Reported paid elements include a cloud-hosted version of the Hermes agent sold in tiers between $20 and $200 per month, and an enterprise deployment motion implied by a "Forward Deployed Engineer" role responsible for deploying and adapting Hermes Agent Enterprise inside customer environments. The company is also venture-funded.

Subscription tiers for the cloud-hosted Hermes agent, ranging from $20 to $200 per month, alongside an enterprise version of Hermes Agent deployed in customer environments.

Traction

Hermes has roughly 214,000 GitHub stars and nearly 40,000 forks as of July 2026. The company reported strong investor demand for its 2026 round and has moved from research releases to paid hosted and enterprise products. Eight full-time roles were open across engineering, security, analytics and design at the time of review.

Latest developments

In July 2026, TechCrunch reported that Nous Research was finalizing a raise of at least $75 million led by Robot Ventures with significant participation from USV at a $1.5 billion valuation, with proceeds earmarked for expanding Hermes' products and business model; the company declined to comment. A later deal listing described the round as completed, with Robot Ventures leading and USV and Paradigm participating. The company is concurrently hiring across Hermes Cloud, Nous Portal, evaluations, security and enterprise deployment.