Meta acquires intelligent agent firm Manus, capping year of aggressive AI moves
Meta’s logo is seen at 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 said on Tuesday it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents, as the tech giant continues its major investments in artificial intelligence.
Founded in China before moving to Singapore, Manus launched the first general AI agent earlier this year that can handle complex tasks such as market research, coding and data analysis.
company He claimed to have succeeded. Just eight months after launch, its average annual revenue was over $100 million, while its revenue rate exceeded $125 million.
Meta he said expression It said the acquisition aims to accelerate AI innovation for businesses and integrate advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products, including the Meta AI assistant.
“Manus already serves the daily needs of millions of users and businesses around the world… We plan to scale this service to many more businesses,” Meta said.
According to the companies, Manus will continue to provide its subscription service uninterrupted.
While other terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, the Wall Street Journal reported According to sources with knowledge of the acquisition, the deal was completed for over $2 billion.
The report also noted that the start-up was seeking a new round of fundraising at a $2 billion valuation when it was approached by Meta.
Manus began as a product of Chinese start-up Butterfly Effect, also known as Monica.Im, before becoming a separate entity.
It emerged as a notable AI player earlier this year after claiming its chatbot offered superior performance to OpenAI’s Deep Research representative.
The company raised $75 million in a Series B funding round led by US venture 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.
Beginning It was reported that he was dismissed Most of its staff was in Beijing in July before moving its headquarters to Singapore in June as it looks to expand globally.
“Joining Meta allows us to build a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing the way Manus operates or the way decisions are made,” said Manus CEO Xiao Hong. company description.
The firm also highlighted its existing ties with Chinese tech companies by announcing a strategic partnership with Alibaba’s Qwen AI team in March.
Aggressive AI expansion
Meta’s acquisition of Manus fits into its broader AI strategy to capture specialized AI start-ups to acquire talent and accelerate the broader AI business, including the development of open-source Lama large language models.
For example, in June Meta invested $14.3 billion in AI start-up Scale AI in a deal that brought its founder and CEO Alexandr Wang to Meta’s AI leadership team.
Meanwhile, Meta acquired AI wearables start-up Limitless earlier this month as it plans to grow its AI devices business.
In the case of Manus, the firm’s AI agent tools have attracted the attention of major technology companies. in October, Microsoft started testing Manus on Windows 11 PCsallows 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 both free and paid subscription tiers.
Meta said Manus employees will join its teams as the company continues to aggressively poach AI talent from start-ups and major rivals including OpenAI. Google.
