Nous Research seeks $75 million at $1.5 billion valuation: Report
The crypto-native VC firm is backing an open-source AI startup less than three months after its $50M Series A, signaling where smart money thinks the next cycle is heading.
AI startup Nous Research is close to securing at least $75 million in fresh funding at a $1.5 billion valuation, with Robot Ventures leading the round and USV among the major participants, according to a recent report from TechCrunch.
Founded by AI researchers with published research cited by Meta and DeepSeek, the company reached a valuation of about $1 billion in April 2025 following a $50 million Series A investment led by Paradigm.
Nous Research’s flagship product, Hermes, entered the market shortly after OpenClaw popularized locally run AI agents. Hermes differentiates itself with built-in skills including web search, coding and image analysis, along with the ability to learn new capabilities automatically from user activity. The startup has also developed specialized language models for coding and math applications.
The open-source platform has attracted approximately 214,000 GitHub stars and nearly 40,000 forks, making it one of the most widely adopted AI agent projects.
Alongside its self-hosted offering, Nous Research provides a cloud-hosted version through subscriptions. The latest financing is expected to accelerate product development and commercial expansion.