Nous Research funds Hermes for Businesses to bring open-source agents into the enterprise

What changed: Nous Research raised $90 million in Series B funding at a $1.5 billion valuation to expand Hermes, its open-source AI agent, into an enterprise product called Hermes for Businesses. The company reports Hermes has been cloned more than 24 million times, drives about 2.5% of global AI token usage, and will be deployed as customizable agents across Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp and other channels for business users.

Why it matters: Operators get a widely adopted, open-source agent with an enterprise wrapper, reducing dependence on closed assistants and making it easier to embed agents directly in existing communication tools. Buyers should assess how Hermes isolates sensitive data across multiple chat networks and what controls exist for per-agent permissions and logging.

Try/watch: Shortlist Hermes for pilot use in one high-volume workflow (support triage, sales follow-up, or internal requests) and define clear access boundaries and audit requirements before rolling it out more broadly.

Microsoft’s Work IQ preview grounds Copilot agents in live business data

What changed: Microsoft began its October rollout of Work IQ, a preview capability that connects Copilot and autonomous agents directly to live business data in Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, instead of relying mainly on generic training data. Agents can now tap into customer relationship data, ERP records, and low-code automation flows to embed “business and workplace intelligence” into how they reason and act, though general availability timing and pricing remain unannounced.

Why it matters: This is a step toward agents that understand your actual customers, orders, and processes, making them more useful for tasks like account updates, collections workflows, and service follow-up. Builders need to treat Work IQ configurations as a critical security layer, ensuring agents only read and act on data that matches their role and that every action is auditable.

Try/watch: If you’re on Dynamics 365 or Power Platform, start by mapping one or two high-friction processes (like quote-to-cash or case routing) and design agent permissions and success metrics before enabling Work IQ on production data.

Personal Agent Protocol highlights emerging standards—and delays—in agent commerce

What changed: Sierra’s Personal Agent Protocol (PAP) is being developed as an open standard, alongside partners like Meta, Shopify, Stripe and Walmart, to let a customer’s personal AI agent identify itself, obtain permission, and interact with a business through its website, APIs or company agents for tasks such as checking availability or changing orders. Yet the formal PAP v0.1 specification—and other promised agent standards like Google’s Gemini agent general availability and the A2A Agent Registry—remain unshipped as of October 10, leaving vendors to fill the gap with proprietary extensions that fragment the stack.

Why it matters: PAP-style standards could eventually let any trusted personal agent shop or manage accounts across many businesses without bespoke integrations, which is attractive for both consumers and merchants. Until the specs land, founders should be cautious about locking into proprietary “agent APIs” that may diverge from future standards and increase integration costs.

Try/watch: Prioritize building clean, well-documented traditional APIs and event flows that could be exposed through PAP later, and track October updates on PAP, Gemini agents, and agent registries before committing to one vendor’s custom agent interface.