- Recent Funding
- Founders
- Karan Malhotra
Karan Malhotra
About Karan
Karan Malhotra is a co-founder of Nous Research, an AI lab focused on open-source AI training and research. He co-founded the company in 2023, which aims to create and democratize access to intelligence. Nous Research is known for its Hermes Agent, an open-source AI agent, and is working on decentralized AI model development.
Strengths: founder archetype
one sourced signal · hover a cell for it, click for the source
Why researcher
Karan Malhotra's path is characterized by a strong focus on advancing AI research, particularly in open-source and decentralized methods. He co-founded Nous Research with a mission to democratize access to intelligence and has been instrumental in developing innovative approaches to AI training.
The signals behind it 2
- Malhotra described Nous as an open-source research organization, created in 2022 as a group of volunteers who met on social media and software platforms including Discord, GitHub, and Twitter.Researcher · Community builder
F - They started to tinker with existing AI large language models such as Meta’s Llama and Mistral to create their own versions, releasing a series of models under the name Hermes that gained popularity in the open-source coResearcher · Technical builder · Community builderF
Karan Malhotra | Open-Source AI Pioneer and Decentralized AI Advocate
Every tag links its source.
Network
Background
1
- Co-Founder Nous Research
T
Timeline, line by line 4
W
FIn their words
5
- “We very much came from a mentality that we want to create and serve the world’s best AI”On the mission of Nous Research. · Apr 25, 2025F
- “We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute, less as a donation but more as a transaction”On using crypto for incentivizing distributed computing. · Apr 25, 2025F
- “We see crypto as the method that allows us to perform this in a safe way”On the role of crypto in ensuring safety in distributed training. · Apr 25, 2025F
- “We don’t want to get kind of bogged down by the traditional view of how crypto operates when we’re a very serious research lab and an academic lab”On balancing the perception of crypto with Nous Research's identity as a serious research lab. · Apr 25, 2025F
- “[But] this is really the only way in which we can make such a massive training run and such a democratic thing possible.”On the necessity of blockchain for democratic and large-scale AI training. · Apr 25, 2025F
Team at Nous Research
- emozillaCo-founder/cto@theemozillaX
- Teknium 🪽Cofounder@TekniumX
- DillCeo@dillonrolnickX
- Calvin NgTeam member@calvinnwqX
- 𝖕𝖍𝖗𝖆𝖌𝖌Team member@phraggX
Interviews and coverage
6
- Nous Research Nears $75M Funding Round at $1.5B Valuation for Open-Source AI Agent HermesAI Insider · Jul 14, 2026T
- Hermes agent maker Nous Research in talks for new funding at $1.5B valuationTechCrunch · Jul 13, 2026T
- Nous Research, maker of OpenClaws' American rival Hermes agent, in talks to raise new funding at $1.5 bilThe Times of India · Jul 14, 2026
T - Exclusive: Crypto VC giant Paradigm makes $50 million bet on decentralized AI startup Nous ResearchFortune · Apr 25, 2025F
- Nous Research secures $50M from Paradigm to build decentralized AI on SolanaTradingView · Apr 25, 2025
T - Nous Research Lands $65M to Champion Open-Source Approach to AI DevelopmentAI Insider · Apr 30, 2025T
How this is researched
Researched from public pages: press, interviews, the company's site and the founder's own posts. Each source logo links the page that states the row; anything we couldn't source is left out. The archetype is our reading of that record, from a fixed set so founders can be compared. Updated Oct 12, 2026.
The week's top funded startups and market insights, in your inbox every Monday.
Unsubscribe anytime · privacy