The logo of Meta is seen astatine the Viva Technology league dedicated to innovation and startups astatine Porte de Versailles accumulation halfway successful Paris, France, connected June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Meta Platforms said Tuesday that it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI agents, arsenic the tech elephantine continues its monolithic investments into artificial intelligence.
Manus, founded successful China earlier relocating to Singapore, launched its archetypal wide AI agent earlier this year, which tin execute analyzable tasks specified arsenic marketplace research, coding, and information analysis.
The institution claimed it had achieved an annualized mean gross of much than $100 cardinal conscionable 8 months aft launch, portion its gross tally complaint exceeded $125 million.
Meta said successful a statement that its acquisition was aimed astatine accelerating AI innovation for businesses and integrating precocious automation into its user and endeavor products, including its Meta AI assistant.
"Manus is already serving the regular needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide ... We program to standard this work to galore much businesses," Meta said.
According to the firms, Manus volition proceed operating its subscription work without disruption. Further presumption of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Manus began arsenic a merchandise of Chinese start-up Butterfly Effect, besides known arsenic Monica.Im, earlier increasing into a abstracted entity.
It emerged arsenic a notable AI subordinate earlier this twelvemonth aft claiming its chatbot offered superior show to OpenAI's DeepResearch.
The institution raised $75 cardinal successful a Series B backing circular led by U.S. task steadfast Benchmark successful April, and is backed by Tencent and private equity steadfast HongShan Capital Group (HSG), formerly known arsenic Sequoia, according to information from marketplace probe steadfast Tracxn.
The start-up reportedly laid off astir of its unit successful Beijing successful July earlier moving its office to Singapore successful June arsenic it looked towards planetary expansion.
"Joining Meta allows america to physique connected a stronger, much sustainable instauration without changing however Manus works oregon however decisions are made," Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, said successful a company release.
The steadfast besides announced a strategical concern with Alibaba's Qwen AI squad successful March, highlighting its existing ties to Chinese tech companies.
Aggressive AI expansion
Meta's acquisition of Manus fits into its broader AI strategy of scooping up specialized AI start-ups to get endowment and fast-track its broader AI business, including the improvement of its open-source Llama ample connection models.
In June, for example, Meta invested $14.3 billion successful AI start-up Scale AI, successful a woody that brought its laminitis and CEO, Alexandr Wang, onto Meta's AI enactment team.
Meanwhile, Meta acquired AI-wearables start-up Limitless earlier this period arsenic the institution looks to turn its AI instrumentality business.
In the lawsuit of Manus, the firm's AI cause tools person drawn involvement from large tech companies. In October, Microsoft began testing Manus successful Windows 11 PCs, allowing users to create websites from section files.
To date, Manus claimed to person processed much than 147 trillion "tokens" of substance and data, and supported implicit 80 cardinal virtual computers. It offers some escaped and paid subscription tiers.
Meta said Manus employees volition articulation its teams arsenic the institution continues to aggressively poach AI endowment from start-ups and large rivals, including OpenAI and Google.
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