# Nous Research

> Nous Research is an open-source AI lab founded in 2023 that builds world-class open-weight language models - most notably its Hermes family - and decentralized infrastructure for training them. Its Psyche network coordinates heterogeneous GPUs across the internet via the Solana blockchain, offering a community-driven, transparent alternative to closed labs like OpenAI. Backed by Paradigm and others, the company positions open, unrestricted models as a counterweight to centralized AI.

- **Founded:** 2023
- **Headquarters:** United States
- **Founders:** Jeffrey Quesnelle (Co-founder & CEO), Karan Malhotra (Co-founder, Head of Behavior), Teknium (Ryan Teknium) (Co-founder, Head of Post-Training), Shivani Mitra (Co-founder)
- **Team size:** ~46 employees
- **Products:** Hermes model family, Hermes 4, Psyche Network, Nous Chat, Nous Portal
- **Notable:** Hermes models downloaded tens of millions of times (reported 33M+) from Hugging Face, Raised $50M Series A led by Paradigm at a $1B token valuation (April 2025), Released Hermes 4 with hybrid reasoning and a 94-page technical report (August 2025)

## Products & services

- **Hermes model family** — A line of open-weight, fine-tuned large language models (Hermes 2, 3, and 4) known for steerability, tool use, and hybrid reasoning; downloaded tens of millions of times from Hugging Face.
- **Hermes 4** — Open-weight models (14B, 70B, 405B, based on Llama 3.1 checkpoints) with hybrid reasoning that toggles explicit <think> chains on and off; strong math and reasoning benchmark scores.
- **Psyche Network** — A decentralized training network built on the Solana blockchain that coordinates heterogeneous compute - from consumer RTX 4090s to datacenter H100s - into fault-tolerant distributed training runs.
- **Nous Chat** — A hosted chat interface offering access to Nous models, including free trial access to Hermes 4.
- **Nous Portal** — Access point / platform for Nous products and model APIs.
- **DisTrO / DisTrO optimizer** — Distributed training optimizers that dramatically reduce inter-GPU communication, enabling training over ordinary internet connections.
- **Hermes Agent** — Agentic model/product from Nous Research reported to be the focus of a 2026 funding round.

## Achievements

- Hermes models downloaded tens of millions of times (reported 33M+) from Hugging Face
- Raised $50M Series A led by Paradigm at a $1B token valuation (April 2025)
- Released Hermes 4 with hybrid reasoning and a 94-page technical report (August 2025)
- Hermes 4 405B scored 96.3% on MATH-500 and 81.9% on AIME'24 in reasoning mode
- Built Psyche, a working decentralized training network on Solana
- Reported to be finalizing a round at ~$1.5B valuation (2026)

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Reported to be in talks for a new funding round of $75M+ at a ~$1.5B valuation, led by Robot Ventures with Union Square Ventures, tied to its Hermes Agent.
- **2025-08** — Released Hermes 4, a family of open-weight models (14B/70B/405B) with hybrid reasoning and a 94-page technical report.
- **2025-04** — Closed $50M Series A led by Paradigm at a $1B token valuation to advance decentralized AI training.
- **2025** — Launched the Psyche decentralized training network on Solana, coordinating heterogeneous GPUs across the internet.

## Links

- Website: https://nousresearch.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nousresearch/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/NousResearch
- GitHub: https://github.com/NousResearch

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/nous-research
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-07-18