Nous Research’s Hermes for Businesses, Microsoft Agent Lightning, and Atlassian’s OpenAI Partnership

Nous Research is launching Hermes for Businesses after a Series B round, Microsoft Research has released Agent Lightning version one, and Atlassian and OpenAI are expanding Rovo’s use of frontier models and the Teamwork Graph. Also covered: the TaoD2C-Bench study of industrial UI code generation, Butterfly Effect’s financing after Manus separated from Meta, a GPU-access startup launched by Anjney Midha and former tech executives, and ICANN applications for .agent and .agi.

[Nous Research’s business-agent launch and financing](https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/07/nous-research-confirms-it-hit-1-5b-valuation-launches-ai-agents-for-business-users/): Hermes for Businesses accompanies a $90 million Series B round at a valuation of $1.5 billion.[Microsoft Research’s Agent Lightning](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/agent-lightning-v1-0-a-3500-line-lightweight-agentic-rl-framework-for-training-agents-with-real-harnesses/): An open-source approach to training agents with their existing harnesses.[Atlassian and OpenAI](https://openai.com/index/atlassian-partnership): The expanded partnership connects models with enterprise context across Atlassian’s platform and Rovo.[TaoD2C-Bench](https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.10374v1): Researchers evaluate whether multimodal models generate UI code that meets implementation requirements, not just visual expectations.[Manus and Butterfly Effect](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/manus-raises-500-million-unwinding-meta-deal): The parent company announced a new funding round after Manus separated from Meta Platforms.[The GPU-access startup](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/former-google-nvidia-execs-launch-company-ease-gpu-crunch): Anjney Midha and former Google, Apple, and Nvidia executives aim to improve smaller firms’ access to compute.[ICANN’s new domain applications](https://www.theverge.com/tech/1007132/icann-domains-2026-ai-agi): Applicants are seeking .agent and .agi, but the proposed endings have not been approved.