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Meta Platforms Inc. has acquired Singapore-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup Manus in a deal worth billions of dollars, in what represents one of the highest-profile acquisitions of an AI company with Chinese roots and establishes a new benchmark for Chinese entrepreneurs in the AI era. The acquisition comes less than three years after Manus was founded in 2022.
AI Generated Image
Meta announced Monday it will continue to operate and sell Manus' AI agent service while integrating the technology into its consumer and business products, including Meta AI, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The social media giant aims to "scale this service to many more businesses," according to its statement.
The deal marks Meta's third-largest acquisition in its history, surpassed only by WhatsApp and Scale AI, according to Chinese media outlet LatePost. Financial terms were not officially disclosed, though LatePost reported the purchase price reached billions of dollars. Manus had raised four funding rounds at valuations climbing from $14 million to $500 million in just over two years.
The acquisition gives Meta immediate revenue returns from its massive AI investments. Manus announced earlier this month it had reached an annual revenue run rate exceeding $125 million, just eight months after launching its first general AI agent in March.
Meta Welcomes AI Agent Technology and Leadership
"Manus has built one of the leading autonomous general-purpose agents that can independently execute complex tasks like market research, coding, and data analysis," Meta said in its Monday announcement. The company noted Manus has already served more than 147 trillion tokens and created over 80 million virtual computers.
Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang, who joined the company earlier this year as part of Meta's $29 billion investment in Scale AI, posted on X: "Excited to announce that Manus has joined Meta to help us build amazing AI products! The Manus team in Singapore are world class at exploring the capability overhang of today's models to scaffold powerful agents."
Xiao Hong, Manus co-founder and CEO who will become vice president at Meta, wrote on X: "When we started Manus, few believed that general AI agents could work. We were told it was too early, too ambitious, too hard. But we kept building." He added, "The era of AI that doesn't just talk, but acts, creates, and delivers, is only beginning. And now, we get to build it at a scale we never could have imagined."
Rapid Rise of an AI Unicorn
Manus represents a meteoric rise in the AI startup landscape. Founded in 2022 by Xiao Hong and Chinese co-founders, the company initially operated under parent entity Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology Ltd Co before relocating to Singapore. Xiao, from Ji'an, Jiangxi Province and a Huazhong University of Science and Technology graduate, previously developed WeChat ecosystem plugins YiBan and WeiBan.
The company's first product was Monica, a browser AI plugin offering chat, search, reading, writing and translation functions based on existing large language models. Despite industry skepticism that dismissed it as "repackaging," Monica became one of the few profitable products in China's AI sector.
Manus gained widespread attention in March when it released AI agents capable of screening resumes, creating trip itineraries and analyzing stocks with basic instructions. The company claimed its service outperformed OpenAI's Deep Research on some fronts. The product is not available in China despite its Chinese founders.
In December, Manus announced it had crossed the $125 million annual run rate milestone. "We've been growing at more than 20% month-over-month since the release of Manus 1.5, and we're continuing to accelerate our product and feature releases," the company said.
Investors' Pursuit
Manus attracted rapid investor interest, completing four funding rounds in just over two years. The company raised a seed round in February 2023 at a $14 million post-money valuation from ZhenFund, followed by an angel round in August 2023 at $50 millon valuation, also backed by the venture capital firm.
A November 2024 Series A round reached $85 million valuation with investors including HongShan, Tencent, ZhenFund, Meituan co-founder Wang Huiwen and Old Friendship Capital.
In April 2025, Benchmark Capital led a Series B round valuing Manus at nearly $500 million, with participation from ZhenFund, HongShan, Tencent and other US and Chinese VC funds. Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta joined the company's board as part of that deal.
ByteDance Ltd. in early 2024 offered $30 million to acquire Butterfly Effect when Monica was experiencing rapid growth, LatePost reported. PriortoMeta′s acquisition, Manus was reportedly raising a new round at a $2 billion valuation.
"It happened so fast that we even wondered if it was a fake offer," Liu Yuan, ZhenFund partner and angel investor in Butterfly Effect, told LatePost. He said acquisition negotiations completed in just over ten days. "The era belonging to this generation of young Chinese entrepreneurs has arrived," said Liu.
Strategic Move in Meta's AI Ambitions
The acquisition advances Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's strategy to build immediate business returns from Meta's massive AI spending. The company is investing heavily to compete against OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Microsoft Corp., with Zuckerberg pledging $600 billion on US infrastructure projects over three years, many AI-related.
Manus provides Meta with a subscription-based AI agent service generating actual revenue, addressing investor skepticism about whether Meta's aggressive spending will produce meaningful returns. AI agents that perform specific digital tasks without human supervision represent what enterprise software companies including Salesforce Inc. and ServiceNow Inc. promote as the most effective business application of AI technology.
The deal adds millions of paying users to Meta's ecosystem and represents a new direction for the company, which previously emphasized "open source" models largely free to access. "Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made," Xiao said Monday.
