Nous Research releases the Hermes family of open models and Hermes Agent, an open-source AI agent. It raised $90 million in October 2026 from investors including NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung and Union Square Ventures.
At a glance
| Price from | Free |
| Best for | Developers who want open, user-controlled models and agents |
From Nous Research's own website.
What stands out
- Large open-source following
- Fully open releases
Worth knowing
- Smaller budget than frontier labs
- Limited enterprise support
How it ranks
Nous Research is ranked 9th of 10 in Best Open-Source AI Startups (Lister Score 87.0).
#9 in Best Open-Source AI Startups · Lister Score 87.0
Nous says Hermes Agent has been cloned more than 24 million times..
| Rank | Best Open-Source AI Startups | Score |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mistral AI | 97.3 |
| 2 | Moonshot AI | 96.0 |
| 3 | Together AI | 94.8 |
| 4 | Black Forest Labs | 93.5 |
| 5 | Reflection AI | 92.2 |
| 6 | Ollama | 90.9 |
| 7 | LangChain | 89.6 |
| 8 | Inferact | 88.3 |
| 9 | Nous Research | 87.0 |
| 10 | Stability AI | 85.7 |
Frequently asked questions
How does Nous Research rank on Lister?
Nous Research is ranked 9th of 10 in Best Open-Source AI Startups (Lister Score 87.0).
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