Meta’s logo is seen during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Meta Platforms announced Tuesday that it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents, as the tech giant continues its massive investments in artificial intelligence.
Manus, founded in China before moving to Singapore, launched its first general contractor AI Agent earlier this year, which can perform complex tasks such as market research, coding and data analysis.
The company claimed that he had reached an average annualized revenue of over $100 million just eight months after its launch, while its revenue run rate exceeded $125 million.
Meta said in a statement that its acquisition was aimed at accelerating AI innovation for businesses and integrating advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products, including its Meta AI assistant.
“Manus already meets the daily needs of millions of users and businesses around the world… We plan to expand this service to more businesses,” Meta said.
The company also said it would take steps to terminate Manus AI’s remaining business operations in China and that “there will be no further Chinese participation” after the transaction.
According to the companies, Manus will continue to operate its subscription service without interruption.
Although additional terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported that the transaction was concluded for an amount exceeding $2 billion, according to sources familiar with the matter.
The startup was looking for a new fundraising round at a valuation of $2 billion when it was approached by Meta, the report added.
Manus began as a product of Chinese startup Butterfly Effect, also known as Monica.Im, before becoming a separate entity.
It became a notable player in AI earlier this year after claiming its chatbot delivered superior performance to OpenAI’s Deep Research agent.
The company raised $75 million in a Series B funding round led by US venture capital firm Benchmark in April and is backed by Tencent and private equity firm HongShan Capital Group (HSG), formerly known as Sequoia, according to data from market research firm Tracxn.
The start-up would have been fired most of its staff in Beijing in July before moving its headquarters to Singapore in June as part of a global expansion.
“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus operates or how decisions are made,” Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, said in a statement. company press release.
The company also announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba’s Qwen AI team in March, highlighting its existing ties to Chinese technology companies.
Aggressive expansion of AI
Meta’s acquisition of Manus is part of its broader AI strategy of recruiting specialist AI start-ups to acquire talent and accelerate its broader AI activities, including the development of its large open source Llama language models.
In June for example, Meta invested 14.3 billion dollars in the AI start-up Scale AI, as part of an agreement which brought together its founder and CEO, Alexander Wangas part of Meta’s AI leadership team.
Meanwhile, Meta acquisition of the start-up dedicated to AI wearables Limitless earlier this month as the company looks to expand its AI device business.
In Manus’ case, the company’s AI agent tools have attracted interest from large tech companies. In October, Microsoft began essay Manus on Windows 11 PCsallowing users to create websites from local files.
To date, Manus claimed to have processed more than 147 trillion text and data “tokens” and supported more than 80 million virtual computers. It offers free and paid subscription levels.
Meta said Manus employees would join its teams as the company continues to aggressively poach AI talent from startups and major competitors, including OpenAI and Google.