Meta to buy startup to boost advanced AI

Meta announced this week that it would acquire Chinese-founded artificial intelligence startup Manus, as the technology giant accelerates efforts to integrate advanced AI across its platforms.

Financial terms of the transaction were not released, but a source with direct knowledge of the matter said the deal values the Singapore-based firm at between $2 billion and $3 billion.

Manus went viral early this year on X after it released what it claimed was the world’s first general AI agent, capable of making decisions and executing tasks autonomously, with much less prompting required than AI chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek.

That drove commentators to call it China’s next DeepSeek, and it was cheered by Chinese state television. The company months later moved its headquarters from China to Singapore, joining a wave of other Chinese companies that have done so to curb risks from US-China tensions.

“Scrutiny is almost guaranteed; anything with Chinese roots and ‘AI’ in the headline now triggers Washington’s reflexes,” said Jeremy Goldman, senior director at Emarketer.

Manus, whose products are not available in China, claims its AI agent’s performance surpasses that of OpenAI’s DeepResearch. It also has a strategic partnership with Alibaba (9988.HK) to collaborate on their AI models.

Meta will operate and sell the Manus service and integrate it into its consumer and business products, including in Meta AI, the company said.

“We see a natural fit into Meta’s fast-growing, WhatsApp SMB (small, medium business) footprint, with extensions into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s agentic-rich vision of personal AI,” said Barton Crockett, analyst at Rosenblatt Securities.

Tech giants such as Meta have been ramping up AI investments through strategic acquisitions and talent hires as they navigate fierce industry competition.

Earlier this year, the Facebook owner invested in Scale AI in a deal that valued the data-labeling startup at $29 billion and brought in its 28-year-old CEO, Alexandr Wang.

Manus, backed by its parent Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology, raised $75 million this year at a valuation of around $500 million, the source said, confirming previous media reports. US venture firm Benchmark led the funding round.

Its investors also include HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, ZhenFund and internet giant Tencent Holdings (0700.HK), PitchBook data showed.