Meta has just spent 2 billion to buy Manus AI, a startup that can take control of your computer screen and do things for you, similar to how ChatGPT agents and a lot of these other browsers are being able to accomplish tasks for you that you give it.
Now, the thing that's interesting is Meta did not have a player in this space, and there's a bunch of interesting reasons why they're doing this.
But the controversy is around the fact that Manus has a Chinese background.
It was originally started in Beijing.
And a lot of people have concerns about AI coming out of China.
So today on the podcast, we're going to break down all of the concerns what the company is able to do, who's the winners and losers in this, and where we see meta in the future.
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All right, let's talk about what Meta's got going on right now.
Zuckerberg has struck again.
That's the headline over on TechCrunch, which I think is hilarious.
But what's interesting here, Meta platforms are going to acquire Manus.
Now, I mentioned earlier that this was a company out of China.
It's actually technically out of Singapore right now.
It was started...
In Beijing back in 2022, and it was originally called Butterfly Effect.
After that, in the middle of 2025, it was moved over to Singapore.
I think a lot of this had to do with the fact that they were trying to raise money.
They were raising money from Americans and Singapore.
You know, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a Beijing AI startup wasn't, you know, the most trendy thing?
So we'll get into who and why that happened.
But before we do, just as far as like words on the deal, they last raised money in April.
And this was just weeks after they launched.
They had a venture capital firm which was Benchmark, one of the top tier VC firms here, who led a 75 million funding round.
At the time, Manus had a post-money valuation of $500 million.
And one of the general partners of Benchmark, which was Chetan Pataganta, joined their board.
According to Chinese media outlets,
There were some other big name backers that had already invested in Manus at that point Tencent Zenfund HSG, which is formerly known as Sequoia China.
And they all invested in a $10 million round.
So then they did a $75 million round at a $500 million valuation.
This was just weeks after it launched.
And when it first launched it had this really buzzy viral video that kind of went out Um, and apparently since then they have signed up millions of users and they have annual recurring revenues of more than a hundred million dollars from monthly and yearly subscribers to their membership service.
So, apparently right after that happened, that's when Meta started negotiating with Manus, according to a report by the wall street journal, which says that they are now going to pay 2 billion, which is this is just the valuation that Manus was trying to get for their next funding round.
So you know, essentially they go and raise um at a 500 million valuation.
Then they're like hey, we're going to do a 2 billion valuation next.
And then Meta is like well, we'll just, we'll just buy up the whole round, we'll just buy your whole company.
And so that's what's happened.
I think right now for Meta, obviously they you know Mark Zuckerberg has really staked Meta's future on AI.
He's pivoted all of his you know, all of his virtual reality stuff to really be more focused on AI right now, spending tons of millions of dollars on that.
And I think Manus is a really interesting product for them to buy right now because it's actually making money.
So far, you know, Meta AI is free on all of the different platforms.
They've created a ton of like open source AI tools and everything they're making is kind of free.
And so this is a tool that's actually making money, which is interesting.
I mean, $100 million is nothing compared to what... what Meta is doing right now.
But I also think this is a really useful tool, right?
We have OpenAI, we have Claude or Anthropic, we have Google, we have all of these players that are coming out with these.
You know the software and this technology that can kind of do tasks for you, these agent tasks.
And even Google, to be fair, hasn't actually officially launched Project Mariner, which is their version of this tool.
So I think Meta getting in and just buying one of these is a good indicator that they're really competitive and they want to keep playing in the market.
It was a pretty popular tool.
I have friends that I know that use Manus.
It wasn't like a huge part of my workflow personally, but I know a lot of people that do use it.
I think this is interesting because right now Meta is about to spend 60 billion on infrastructure and And kind of the broader tech industries.
Debt-backed expenses on data center construction is getting crazy.
We see OpenAI signing, you know, $500 million deals for Project Stargate to build data centers.
And so someone like OpenAI or someone like Anthropic, they obviously have you know very clear paths when they're doing a big if they do a big infrastructure play to getting their money back.
They have a product that makes a lot of money and Meta does not.
They're just kind of like, well... at the end of the day, everything benefits Meta and Instagram.
And so it's all good to kind of just spend the money for those causes.
But I think their investors don't love that necessarily.
So if they actually are getting products that are able to accomplish tasks, that will be great.
So what's going to happen to Manus?
Because this is a really popular tool.
It's got millions of users and $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Meta says that they're going to keep letting it run independently, which personally I think is fantastic.
They said they're going to weave their AI agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
I don't even know what that means, but I guess we'll find out.
Honestly, I just think it's a great asset.
I think it's a great tool.
Um, they said that meta's own chatbot, meta ai, is already available to users on all those different platforms, so they're going to just incorporate a bunch of manis stuff.
Manis is interesting, it like it can go and, you know, take action for you.
So i'm not exactly sure what that would look like on facebook, but In any case, I think this is a great tool.
I think it's a great buy, especially if they want to get into like, any sort of enterprise software, which I know really isn't their target audience.
People do use it as well.
This is where the biggest glitch and controversy of this whole story comes into play though, which is the China connection.
I already mentioned it before, right?
This was named Butterfly Effect when it first launched in or when it was first founded in 2022.
And it wasn't just somewhere random like this was started in Beijing, China.
And what's interesting is a lot of people are like.
I've heard people be like oh, it started in Beijing, but then they moved it to Singapore.
It's not really a Chinese company.
Like they moved it to Singapore in the middle of 2025 after they'd already raised a huge round, after they've already raised 75 million from an American firm.
So obviously, there was a lot of red flags that Washington was bringing up on that deal.
Specifically Senator John Korn.
You know was kind of roasting benchmark for their investment interest into the company.
He was raising a bunch of concerns about it back in May.
So they made the investment in April.
He was kind of getting mad at them the next month because you know, he was just concerned about American money going to China, basically.
He's a Texas Republican, senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
He definitely has been one of Congress's most vocal people on China and you know, not supporting China and keeping sort of a technological competitive advantage by keeping our money here.
But I will say, I don't think this is a very partisan issue.
I think being tough on China is basically one of the genuinely single bipartisan issues in Congress right now.
So Democrats and Republicans genuinely agree on not giving China money, that it is an adversary or threat that we need to be concerned about, especially from a technological perspective.
So I do think this is interesting meta.
Unsurprisingly, I will say they were speaking about this and talking about what was going to happen after the acquisition.
They said that Manus isn't going to have any ties to Chinese investors.
So basically, once they purchase the company, they'll pay everybody out, but they're not going to have any.
You know, like Chinese investors aren't going to have any sort of influence and are going to have any sort of equity or shares in the company.
They said, quote there will be no continuing Chinese ownership interest in Manus AI following the transaction and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China.
That was that Meta spokesperson.
What I thought was interesting about that was the fact that they're going to discontinue their services and operations in China.
So beyond just like kind of buying it and being like look, you know well, maybe we'll serve people around the world.
They're literally cutting off China, the investors and the users, which I wonder what percentage of the users were contributing to that 100 million of annual recurring revenue, if they're going to take a financial hit there.
I'm not sure.
I mean, it is a, you know, it is a Chinese company.
So I would assume that they have a bunch of users there.
But it's also very popular in the United States.
I hear a.
I've heard people you know when there was all of the drama around DeepSeek and everyone saying oh no, there's like this Chinese AI and it's going to like gobble up all of the data of the Americans.
I did hear a lot of people say, OK, well, there's also Manus that no one has talked about.
There's a Chinese company and it's becoming very popular.
So, you know, look out for Manus as well.
So like I think there was kind of warning signs and stuff there.
And obviously they're trying to mitigate that by moving to Singapore and stuff.
So it's interesting to me that Meta is going to completely cut off China.
Now, to be fair, Meta is also a company, that is.
Even if they didn't, maybe China would have cut them off anyways, because Meta is.
You know, Facebook is banned, Instagram is banned in China.
All social media platforms are basically banned in China.
And so maybe they're just preemptively doing it because they know that you know, by joining Meta there, you know Manus is just going to get banned anyways.
So very interesting.
I'll definitely keep you up to date on everything happening with this deal.
2 billion is an incredible win for a lot of people that did invest in this company that are working there.
And I do think it's a great piece of technology.
So I'll be interested to see how this gets incorporated and ruled out.
Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today.
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