(Bloomberg/Kurt Wagner) — Meta Platforms Inc. has agreed to acquire Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup, adding a popular artificial intelligence agent as the social media company works to build a business around its massive investment in AI.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI his company’s top priority and is spending billions to hire researchers, build data centers and develop new models. Manus, which reported annual revenue of $125 million earlier this year, sells an AI agent to businesses through a subscription service, which could give Meta a more immediate return on some of its AI investment. No financial terms were disclosed.
The parent company behind Manus, which was founded in China before moving to Singapore, raised funding earlier this year at a valuation of nearly $500 million in an investment round led by US venture capital firm Benchmark. Benchmark was criticized at the time by lawmakers and other venture capitalists for backing an AI company with ties to China.
Manus launched its product earlier this year, an AI agent capable of performing a handful of general tasks, including checking resumes, creating travel itineraries, and scanning inventory in response to basic instructions. Meta has an AI chatbot, Meta AI, which is available through the company’s social media and messaging platforms – Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – in addition to its AI glasses.
Meta is spending aggressively to compete in the AI race against rivals like OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. Zuckerberg has pledged to spend $600 billion on U.S. infrastructure projects over the next three years, many of which are expected to be related to AI. The company has hired an expensive team of researchers to develop a new cutting-edge AI model that it plans to launch next spring, and has faced some skepticism from investors who fear Meta’s spending won’t generate significant revenue in the near future.
Meta is acquiring Manus’ technology and leadership group, although the company did not specify where the new team would be located within the organization. The company’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, joined Meta earlier this summer as part of a large-scale investment in his startup, Scale AI.
Meta, in a statement Monday, said it would continue to operate and sell Manus’ service as well as integrate it into the company’s products.
(Updates with information on Manus and Meta starting in third paragraph.)
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