What Happened
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, revealed its plan to acquire Manus, the fast-growing artificial intelligence startup. Although Meta has not formally announced the exact amount, the transaction is said to be over $2 billion. Manus is an autonomous AI startup Manus based in Singapore that was founded in China before moving its headquarters.
Who is Manus and Why Meta Acquires Manus?
The Butterfly Effect company created Manus and is famous for developing autonomous AI agents, which explains part of why Meta acquires Manus as a strategic move. That means these agents can do the tasks without any human intervention at all. Their tech is way ahead of ordinary Q&A chatbots.
Instead, it can be used for various real-world tasks such as research, coding, data analysis, etc. The autonomous AI startup Manus was founded in early 2025 and attracted attention very fast. Within eight months of the launch, Manus had over $100 million in annual recurring revenue and a million-strong user base.
Why Meta Bought Manus
Meta announced that it will implement Manus’s advanced AI agent technology across all its major applications such as Meta AI, WhatsApp, and others. By doing so, the company is planning to provide users with Meta AI agents designed to answer questions and also complete complex tasks.
Manus’s head, Xiao Hong, will become a vice president at Meta post-acquisition, and the Manus crew will be working on their technology in Singapore.
Chinese Roots and Regulatory Sensitivity
The origin of Manus in China has become a point of interest, especially as Meta acquires Manus during a tense competition between the United States and China in technology and AI, which has been intensifying. Meta, trying to alleviate the concerns of the regulators, has announced that after the deal, it will completely cut off any and all connections to Manus that involve Chinese ownership and operations. Besides, the company will no longer serve or operate in China at all.
The Meta acquisition of Manus has been interpreted as a measure designed to mitigate political or regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. in connection to the acquisitions of technology companies with Chinese connections, which are currently being examined more closely.
What Manus’s AI Can Do
Manus’s AI offers a smart individual assistant kind of service, rather than a conventional chatbot. It enables the agents to organize and execute the jobs with just a little push, rather than requiring a meticulous step-by-step guidance. Among the reported abilities are:
- Information gathering and market data summarization.
- Programming support and new software representation.
- Working on and interpreting large data sets.
- Producing different types of content like e.g. reports or designs.
The users would have the option to take a subscription at different levels, and the company boasts to handle millions of tasks each month.
Strategic Impact for Meta
This acquisition is a step forward in Meta’s plan to enhance its AI features and compete with tech giants like Google and OpenAI. The top management of Meta considers Meta AI agents with autonomy to be the next phase in making intelligent digital tools available to the users through the mainstream products.
Investors reacted positively to the Meta acquisition of Manus, and the company’s share price went up after the announcement. The analysts state that the step has fortified Meta’s standing in the fiercely contested AI domain.
What Comes Next
Manus will still be a standalone product but its technology will be embedded into Meta’s platforms. The company will keep operating from Singapore, and the access to Manus’s subscription services will not be affected for the users, they will still be able to use them separately.
Meta’s acquisition Manus in a move that reflects a wider trend of technology giants buying specialized AI firms to scale quickly for fast capability expansion and providing more sophisticated tools to users in all social, business, and consumer applications.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is Manus and what does it do?
Manus is an autonomous artificial intelligence agent developed by a Singapore-based company originally founded in China. It is designed to perform complex real-world tasks such as research, data analysis, coding, and market evaluation without continuous human guidance. It is considered one of the first AI systems capable of executing multi-step tasks end to end rather than simply responding to prompts.
- Why did Meta acquire Manus?
To enhance its AI capabilities, particularly in the area of agent technology, Meta acquires Manus as part of its long-term AI strategy. The plan is to assimilate the independent AI power of Manus into the different platforms like Meta AI, Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. This move will lead to an expansion of the AI offered by Meta so that it goes beyond simple conversational means to the scale of being user-friendly acting, planning, and completing systems.
- How much did Meta pay for Manus?
Meta did not officially announce the financial terms. Nevertheless, very credible reports from a number of media outlets are talking of a price tag of $2 billion plus for the deal, with some estimates going as high as $2-3 billion.
- Will Manus continue to operate as a separate product after the acquisition?
Yes. Meta has announced that it is not going to change the existing services and subscription model of Manus. At the same time, the integration of its technology into the Meta AI ecosystem is taking place. Manus will not only be situated in Singapore but also will be able to run its platform independently.
- What happened to Manus’s ties to China after the acquisition?
While the statement seems directed towards the regulatory and geopolitical concerns, Meta has outrightly confirmed that all the Chinese ties and ownership in relation to Manus will be cut off entirely. Manus will cease operations in China, and no Chinese funds or staff will have either access to Classified data or control over it.
