Meta buys startup identified for its AI activity automation brokers

Meta has acquired an AI startup known as Manus — identified for its customized analysis and website-building brokers — in a deal valued at greater than $2 billion, in keeping withThe Wall Street Journal. It is reportedly one of many largest acquisitions but involving a startup nurtured in China’s AI ecosystem.

Manus arrived in March 2025, shortly after one other Chinese language AI startup, DeepSeek appeared on the scene. The corporate (known as Butterfly Impact on the time) initially described it as “the primary basic AI agent” to carry out advanced duties autonomously, fairly than simply producing concepts. It attracts from a number of third-party fashions, significantly Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet and variations of Alibaba’s Qwen.

Manus is designed to automate sure duties, like market analysis, coding, gross sales information evaluation and web site cloning and creation. (Nevertheless, one skeptic called it “a product devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded a lot.”) The corporate claims that Manu is “already serving the every day wants of tens of millions of customers and companies” and has an annualized common income of greater than $100 million solely eight months after launch.

Manus laid off most of its Beijing staff this summer season earlier than shifting its headquarters to Singapore in an effort to increase globally.The corporate was reportedly in search of a funding spherical that may have valued it at $2 billion when it was approached by Meta. “Becoming a member of Meta permits us to construct on a stronger, extra sustainable basis with out altering how Manus works or how selections are made,” mentioned Manus CEO Xiao Hong in a company news release.