Why Mark Zuckerberg wants Meta to buy an AI startup with Chinese origins for more than two billion dollars
Meta AI (photo source Thomas Fuller / Zuma Press / Profimedia)
International media reported that Meta bought an AI agent startup called Manus and would have paid somewhere between two and three billion dollars for the company, which has Chinese founders but moved to Singapore this summer.
For Mark Zuckerberg, who bet the entire future of the Meta group on the development of AI, the Manus company represents something new: an artificial intelligence product that actually makes money, writes TechCrunch.
Financial terms of the Manus deal were not made public, but a source close to the talks told Reuters the deal values the company somewhere in the $2-3 billion range. Manus was also dubbed “the next DeepSeek”, alluding to the company that was written about so much at the beginning of 2025.
Meta says it will keep Manus as an independent entity, but integrate AI agents into Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, apps where the company's own chatbot, Meta AI, has been available for some time.
Manus launched in early 2025 an artificial intelligence agent capable of performing a series of general tasks such as: sorting CVs, creating travel plans and analyzing actions, writes Bloomberg.
Manus attracted a $75 million funding round in the first months after launch, and was valued at $500 million in April.
The startup briefly became the talk of Silicon Valley after a demo video was posted in the spring that was so well-made that it quickly went viral. The clip featured an AI agent capable of doing things like screening job candidates, planning vacations and analyzing stock portfolios. Manus claimed at the time that its technology surpassed OpenAI's.
The parent company behind Manus, Butterfly Effect, was founded in China in 2022, and the move to Singapore occurred in mid-2025.
Reuters notes that Manus is among a number of Chinese companies that have set up headquarters in Singapore in recent years, betting that the move to the trade-oriented propser state will reduce the risk that their operations will be affected by geopolitical tensions between the US and China.
