Meta buys startup known for its AI task automation agents

Meta has acquired an AI startup referred to as Manus — recognized for its customized analysis and website-building brokers — in a deal valued at greater than $2 billion, in accordance withThe Wall Street 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 (referred to as Butterfly Impact on the time) initially described it as “the primary normal AI agent” to carry out advanced duties autonomously, quite than simply producing concepts. It attracts from a number of third-party fashions, significantly 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 knowledge evaluation and web site cloning and creation. (Nevertheless, one skeptic called it “a product devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded a lot.”) The corporate claims that Manu is “already serving the every day wants of tens of millions 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 in search of a funding spherical that might 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 selections are made,” stated Manus CEO Xiao Hong in a company news release.