Meta Platforms is buying Manus, an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up company with Chinese founders that conducts deep research and performs other tasks for paying users.
No price was disclosed, but the deal valued the Singapore-based company at between US$2 billion (A$2.98 billion) and $3 billion, Reuters reported in this story.
“We are excited to announce that Manus is joining Meta to bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products,” Meta Platforms said in an announcement on its Facebook social media platform.
Meta said Manus had built one of the leading autonomous general-purpose agents that could independently execute complex tasks like market research, coding and data analysis.
“We will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products,” Meta said.
Manus Chief Executive Officer Xiao Hong said joining Meta allowed Manus to build a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how it worked or made decisions.
“We’re excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus working together and we will continue to iterate the product and serve users that have defined Manus from the beginning,” Xiao said in a blog.
Manus attracted this year when it released what it claimed was the world's first general AI agent, capable of making decisions and executing tasks autonomously with less prompting than AI chatbots like ChatGPT and DeepSeek.
Since then, the agent has served more than 147,000 tokens and created more than 80 million virtual computers, a service it planned to scale to many more businesses.
Manus was seeking a fresh round of fundraising with a valuation of $2 billion when Meta approached the start-up, the Wall Street Journal newspaper reported in this article.
The company moved its headquarters from China to Singapore to manage risks from trade tensions between China and the United States.
Manus is supported by its parent company, Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology, and its investors include HSG, formerly known as Sequoia Capital China, ZhenFund and internet giant Tencent Holdings.
