5 months ago
Meta has acquired an AI startup called Manus — known for its civilization investigation and website-building agents — successful a woody weighted astatine much than $2 billion, according toThe Wall Street Journal. It's reportedly 1 of nan largest acquisitions yet involving a startup nurtured successful China's AI ecosystem.
Manus arrived successful March 2025, soon aft different Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek appeared connected nan scene. The institution (called Butterfly Effect astatine nan time) primitively described it arsenic "the first wide AI agent" to execute analyzable tasks autonomously, alternatively than conscionable generating ideas. It draws from respective third-party models, peculiarly Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and versions of Alibaba's Qwen.
Manus is designed to automate definite tasks, for illustration marketplace research, coding, income information study and website cloning and creation. (However, 1 skeptic called it "a merchandise devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded truthful much.") The institution claims that Manu is "already serving nan regular needs of millions of users and businesses" and has an annualized mean gross of much than $100 cardinal only 8 months aft launch.
Manus laid disconnected astir of its Beijing labor this summertime earlier moving its office to Singapore successful an effort to grow globally.The institution was reportedly seeking a backing information that would person weighted it astatine $2 cardinal erstwhile it was approached by Meta. "Joining Meta allows america to build connected a stronger, much sustainable instauration without changing really Manus useful aliases really decisions are made," said Manus CEO Xiao Hong successful a company news release.
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