Nous Research raises at least $75 million at $1.5 billion valuation

Nous Research is finalizing at least $75 million in new funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, with Robot Ventures leading the round and USV taking a significant stake alongside other prominent investors. The deal places a sharp price tag on a company that has built its identity around open-source AI rather than the closed, subscription-heavy assistant products that dominate much of the market.

The question for investors is what, exactly, they are buying. Nous Research describes itself as a leader in the American open source AI movement, saying it trains open source language models and builds infrastructure for distributed, unbiased training. Its flagship Hermes Agent is pitched as an open-source agent that grows with the user, while the documentation calls it a self-improving AI agent with a built-in learning loop. The company has also been pushing adjacent products, including the Forge Reasoning API Beta and Nous Chat, a simple chat platform built around the Hermes language model.

The product cadence suggests a company trying to turn open research into a broader software business. Nous Research’s releases page lists Hermes Agent as a June 1, 2025 release, and more recent entries include Hermes 4.3 and other Hermes-related models and research outputs. That matters because the funding arrives while the company is still broadening beyond a single model or demo into a wider stack of tools, APIs and chat interfaces that can attract developers and users.

Nous Research is also leaning hard into infrastructure. It promotes Psyche as open infrastructure that decentralizes AI training across underutilized hardware, a pitch that fits the company’s emphasis on distributed training and open-weight systems. Hermes itself is positioned to run on macOS, Windows and Linux, with both cloud-hosted and local deployment options, a sign that the company wants the agent to be usable in real workflows rather than remain a research showcase.

The valuation reflects a market still rewarding AI companies that can claim both technical differentiation and strategic positioning in infrastructure. But for Nous Research to justify $1.5 billion, it will need to show that its open-source stack can do more than attract developers watching the open-weight movement. It will need recurring demand for Hermes, clear uptake for Forge Reasoning API and Nous Chat, and evidence that Psyche can scale distributed training into a durable business advantage.