Meta has acquired an AI startup known as Manus — recognized for its customized analysis and website-building brokers — in a deal valued at greater than $2 billion, in accordance withThe Wall Avenue Journal. It is reportedly one of many largest acquisitions but involving a startup nurtured in China’s AI ecosystem.
Manus arrived in March 2025, shortly after one other Chinese language AI startup, DeepSeek appeared on the scene. The corporate (known as Butterfly Impact on the time) initially described it as “the primary common AI agent” to carry out complicated duties autonomously, relatively than simply producing concepts. It attracts from a number of third-party fashions, notably Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and variations of Alibaba’s Qwen.
Manus is designed to automate sure duties, like market analysis, coding, gross sales information evaluation and web site cloning and creation. (Nevertheless, one skeptic known as it “a product devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded a lot.”) The corporate claims that Manu is “already serving the day by day wants of hundreds of thousands of customers and companies” and has an annualized common income of greater than $100 million solely eight months after launch.
Manus laid off most of its Beijing staff this summer time earlier than shifting its headquarters to Singapore in an effort to develop globally.The corporate was reportedly looking for a funding spherical that will have valued it at $2 billion when it was approached by Meta. “Becoming a member of Meta permits us to construct on a stronger, extra sustainable basis with out altering how Manus works or how choices are made,” stated Manus CEO Xiao Hong in an organization information launch.
