Nous Research drops Hermes 4 AI models that outperform ChatGPT without content restrictions

Nous Research, a secretive synthetic intelligence startup that has emerged as a number one voice within the open-source AI motion, quietly launched Hermes 4 on Monday, a household of huge language fashions that the corporate claims can match the efficiency of main proprietary methods whereas providing unprecedented consumer management and minimal content material restrictions.

The discharge represents a major escalation within the battle between open-source AI advocates and main know-how firms over who ought to management entry to superior synthetic intelligence capabilities. Not like fashions from OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic, Hermes 4 is designed to answer almost any request with out the security guardrails which have turn into customary in business AI methods.

Nous Analysis presents Hermes 4, our newest line of hybrid reasoning fashions.https://t.co/E5EW9hBurb

Hermes 4 builds on our legacy of user-aligned fashions with expanded test-time compute capabilities.

Particular consideration was given to creating the fashions inventive and fascinating to… pic.twitter.com/52VjnvrDWM

— Nous Analysis (@NousResearch) August 26, 2025

“Hermes 4 builds on our legacy of user-aligned fashions with expanded test-time compute capabilities,” Nous Analysis introduced on X (previously Twitter). “Particular consideration was given to creating the fashions inventive and fascinating to work together with, unencumbered by censorship, and neutrally aligned whereas sustaining cutting-edge stage math, coding, and reasoning efficiency for open weight fashions.”

How Hermes 4’s ‘hybrid reasoning’ mode outperforms ChatGPT and Claude on math benchmarks

Hermes 4 introduces what Nous Analysis calls “hybrid reasoning,” permitting customers to toggle between quick responses and deeper, step-by-step pondering processes. When activated, the fashions generate their inner reasoning inside particular <assume> tags earlier than offering a ultimate reply — just like OpenAI’s o1 reasoning fashions however with full transparency into the AI’s thought course of.

The technical achievement is substantial. In testing, Hermes 4’s largest 405-billion parameter mannequin scored 96.3% on the MATH-500 benchmark in reasoning mode and 81.9% on the difficult AIME’24 mathematics competition — efficiency that rivals or exceeds many proprietary methods costing thousands and thousands extra to develop.

“The problem is making pondering traces helpful and verifiable with out runaway reasoning,” famous AI researcher Rohan Paul on X, highlighting one of many technical breakthroughs within the launch.

Maybe most notably, Hermes 4 achieved the best rating amongst all examined fashions on “RefusalBench,” a brand new benchmark Nous Analysis created to measure how typically AI methods refuse to reply questions. The mannequin scored 57.1% in reasoning mode, considerably outperforming GPT-4o (17.67%) and Claude Sonnet 4 (17%).

Inside DataForge and Atropos: The breakthrough coaching methods behind Hermes 4’s capabilities

Behind Hermes 4’s capabilities lies a classy coaching infrastructure that Nous Research has developed over a number of years. The fashions have been skilled utilizing two novel methods: DataForge, a graph-based artificial knowledge generator, and Atropos, an open-source reinforcement studying framework.

DataForge creates coaching knowledge by what the corporate describes as “random walks” by directed graphs, remodeling easy pre-training knowledge into advanced instruction-following examples. The system can, for example, take a Wikipedia article and rework it right into a rap tune, then generate questions and solutions primarily based on that transformation.

Atropos, in the meantime, operates like lots of of specialised coaching environments the place AI fashions observe particular expertise—arithmetic, coding, instrument use, and artistic writing—receiving suggestions solely after they produce right options. This “rejection sampling” method ensures that solely verified, high-quality responses make it into the coaching knowledge.

Atropos is Nous’ Reinforcement Studying framework

Atropos is an open supply reinforcement studying atmosphere by Nous that has lots of of “gyms” (like math, coding, video games, instrument‑use, imaginative and prescient) to coach and consider LLM trajectories by way of scalable, async RL loops.

In different phrases… pic.twitter.com/fjxaQKClEZ

— Tommy (@Shaughnessy119) August 26, 2025

“Nous used these environments to generate the dataset for Hermes 4!” defined Tommy Shaughnessy, a enterprise capitalist at Delphi Ventures who has invested in Nous Analysis. “All within the dataset incorporates 3.5 million reasoning samples and 1.6 million non-reasoning samples! Hermes was skilled on RL knowledge, not simply static datasets of query and reply!”

The coaching course of required 192 Nvidia B200 GPUs and 71,616 GPU hours for the most important mannequin — a major however not unprecedented computational funding that demonstrates how specialised methods can compete with the huge scale of tech giants.

Why Nous Analysis believes AI security guardrails are ‘annoying as hell’ and damage innovation

Nous Research has constructed its fame on a philosophy that places consumer management above company content material insurance policies. The corporate’s fashions are designed to be “steerable,” which means they are often fine-tuned or prompted to behave in particular methods with out the inflexible security constraints that characterize business AI methods.

“Hermes 4 just isn’t shackled by disclaimers, guidelines and being overly cautious which is annoying as hell and hurts innovation and value,” wrote Shaughnessy in an in depth thread analyzing the discharge. “If its open supply however refuses all requests its pointless. Not a problem with Hermes 4.”

Hermes 4 just isn’t shackled by disclaimers, guidelines and being overly cautious which is annoying as hell and hurts innovation and value.

Hermes 4 70B is at the exact opposite of the spectrum vs OpenAI’s open supply mannequin. It is also ~4x extra open vs ChatGPT 4o!

If its open… pic.twitter.com/q5RpX1oOzo

— Tommy (@Shaughnessy119) August 26, 2025

This method has made Nous Research well-liked amongst AI researchers and builders who need most flexibility, but it surely additionally locations the corporate on the heart of ongoing debates about AI security and content material moderation. Whereas the fashions can theoretically be used for dangerous functions, Nous Analysis argues that transparency and consumer management are preferable to company gatekeeping.

The corporate’s technical report, launched alongside the fashions, supplies unprecedented element concerning the coaching course of, analysis outcomes, and even the precise textual content outputs from benchmark assessments. “We consider this report units a brand new customary for transparency in benchmarking,” the corporate acknowledged.

How a small startup with 192 GPUs is competing towards Large Tech’s billion-dollar AI budgets

Hermes 4‘s launch comes at a pivotal second within the AI business. Whereas main know-how firms have poured billions into growing more and more highly effective AI methods, a rising open-source motion argues that these capabilities shouldn’t be managed by a handful of companies.

Current months have seen important advances in open-source AI, with fashions like Meta’s Llama 3.1, DeepSeek’s R1, and Alibaba’s Qwen sequence reaching efficiency that rivals proprietary methods. Hermes 4 represents one other step on this development, notably within the space of reasoning—lengthy thought-about a power of closed methods like OpenAI’s o1.

“First up, Nous is a startup with dozens of extraordinarily gifted folks,” noted Shaughnessy. “They don’t have the $100b+ annual capex spend of a hyperscaler nor 1,000’s of staff and regardless of that they proceed to place out progressive fashions and analysis at an insane tempo.”

The startup, which raised $65 million in funding earlier this 12 months led by Paradigm, has additionally been growing Psyche Network, a distributed coaching system that goals to coordinate AI coaching throughout internet-connected computer systems utilizing blockchain know-how.

The technical repair that stopped Hermes 4 from pondering in infinite loops

One among Hermes 4‘s most important technical contributions addresses an issue plaguing reasoning fashions: overly lengthy pondering processes. The researchers discovered that their smaller 14-billion parameter mannequin would attain most context size 60% of the time when reasoning, basically getting caught in infinite loops of pondering.

Their answer concerned a second coaching stage that teaches fashions to cease reasoning at precisely 30,000 tokens, decreasing overlong era by 65-79% whereas sustaining a lot of the reasoning efficiency. This “size management” method may show useful for the broader AI analysis group.

“Smaller fashions (<14B) are likely to overthink when distilled, however bigger fashions don’t,” noticed AI researcher Muyu He on X, highlighting insights from the technical report.

Nevertheless, Hermes 4 nonetheless faces limitations widespread to open-source fashions. Regardless of spectacular benchmark efficiency, the fashions require important computational sources to run and will not match the convenience of use or reliability of economic AI companies for a lot of purposes.

The place to strive Hermes 4 and what it prices in comparison with ChatGPT and Claude

Nous Research has made Hermes 4 obtainable by a number of channels, reflecting the open-source philosophy. The mannequin weights are freely downloadable on Hugging Face, whereas the corporate additionally presents API entry by its revamped chat interface and partnerships with inference suppliers like Chutes, Nebius, and Luminal.

“You possibly can strive Hermes 4 within the new, revamped Nous Chat UI,” the corporate introduced, highlighting options like parallel interactions and a reminiscence system.

For enterprise customers and researchers, the fashions signify a doubtlessly enticing different to paying for API entry to proprietary methods, particularly for purposes requiring excessive ranges of customization or dealing with of delicate content material.

The larger image: What Hermes 4 means for the way forward for AI improvement

The discharge of Hermes 4 represents extra than simply one other AI mannequin launch — it’s a press release about who ought to management the way forward for synthetic intelligence. In an business more and more dominated by a handful of tech giants with nearly limitless sources, Nous Analysis has demonstrated that innovation can nonetheless come from sudden locations.

The corporate’s method raises basic questions concerning the trade-offs between security and functionality, between company management and consumer freedom. Whereas main know-how firms argue that cautious content material moderation and security guardrails are important for accountable AI deployment, Nous Analysis contends that transparency and consumer company are extra necessary than corporate-imposed restrictions.

Whether or not this philosophy will finally show useful or problematic stays to be seen. However one factor is for certain: Hermes 4 has proven that the way forward for AI gained’t be decided solely by the businesses with the deepest pockets.

In a subject the place yesterday’s impossibilities turn into tomorrow’s commodities, Nous Analysis simply proved that the one factor extra harmful than an AI that claims no is likely to be one which’s keen to say sure.