Nus Research, Hermes Agent-Driven Startup, Negotiates Investment at 2 Trillion Won Valuation

Nus Research, an U.S. AI startup whose value rose due to its open-source AI agent Hermes, is finalizing a major investment deal. The company is seeking at least $75 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, led by Robot Ventures with participation from Union Square Ventures and other major firms. Since its founding in 2023 by Jeffry Quesnelle, Karan Malhotra, Ryan Tekniyum, and Shibani Mitra, Nus Research has raised $70 million from investors including Paradigm and North Island Ventures. Hermes, an open-source AI agent capable of performing diverse tasks through web search, programming, and image understanding, has gained rapid traction in developer communities, accumulating 214,000 GitHub stars and nearly 40,000 forks. The project offers both self-hosted and cloud-based hosting options.