Nous Research Raises $75M at $1.5B Valuation

Nous Research is closing in on a new funding round that would value the AI startup at $1.5 billion, according to three people familiar with the deal. Robot Ventures is leading the raise, with USV putting in a sizable check alongside other investors. The company is targeting at least $75 million and has drawn heavy interest from backers, the sources said. Nous Research declined to comment, and neither USV nor Robot Ventures responded to requests for comment.

The timing stands out. Nous announced a $50 million Series A less than three months ago, and this new round would push its total funding well past $100 million. Founded in 2023 by Jeffrey Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Teknium and Shivani Mitra, the company had already raised $70 million from investors including Paradigm, Robot Ventures, North Island Ventures, OSS Capital and Balaji Srinivasan, per Crunchbase.

Nous built its name on Hermes, an open-source AI agent, along with a decentralized network for compute and training, plus coding and math-focused language models. Hermes arrived weeks after a rival agent called Openclaw went viral, and the two products now sit close enough to invite direct comparison.