Technology Meta acquires Manus

Meta Acquires Manus: Why the Fast-Growing AI Agent Startup Matters for Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp

Meta is acquiring Manus for $2B, adding an AI agent startup with $100M+ ARR and millions of users as it expands agents across its apps.

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Meta Platforms logo alongside a stylized AI agent icon, symbolizing the acquisition of Manus, an AI agent startup.
Meta acquires Manus, a fast-growing AI agent startup, to expand AI capabilities across its platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.
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Meta Platforms is acquiring Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup that has drawn outsized attention in Silicon Valley since launching last spring with a slick demo of “AI agents” handling practical tasks like screening job candidates, planning vacations, and analyzing stock portfolios. The deal underscores Meta’s push to make AI central to its consumer apps—and to pair that ambition with products that generate real revenue.

What is Manus, and why has it been “the talk” since spring?

Manus emerged from relative obscurity when it debuted last spring with a demo video positioning its software as an AI “agent”—a system designed not just to answer questions, but to take actions across workflows. In the company’s marketing at the time, Manus showed an agent working through multi-step activities such as:

  • screening job candidates
  • planning vacations
  • analyzing stock portfolios

Manus also claimed it outperformed OpenAI’s Deep Research, a comparison that helped propel the startup into the center of ongoing debates about whether agentic AI is ready for broad consumer and business use.

A rapid funding rise: $75M round and a $500M valuation

The company’s momentum quickly translated into fundraising. In April—just weeks after its launch—venture capital firm Benchmark led a $75 million funding round that valued Manus at a post-money valuation of $500 million. The round also brought Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta onto Manus’ board, signaling high-conviction backing from one of Silicon Valley’s best-known firms.

At the same time, other investors had already participated earlier, according to reports from Chinese media outlets. Those backers reportedly included Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly known as Sequoia China), via a $10 million round.

Millions of users and more than $100M in annual recurring revenue

Manus’ business traction is a key reason the acquisition stands out in an industry where attention often outpaces monetization. In mid December, the company announced it had signed up millions of users and was generating annual recurring revenue of more than $100 million. That revenue is tied to monthly and yearly subscribers who pay for access to Manus’ membership service.

For Meta, that kind of paying-user base is not just a vanity metric. It suggests Manus has found product-market fit for agent-style AI—at least among a segment willing to pay for it—at a time when many AI products still rely on heavy subsidization or struggle to convert usage into predictable subscription revenue.

The reported deal price: $2B

Negotiations between Meta and Manus reportedly picked up around the same time as the company’s mid-December revenue update. According to the WSJ, Meta is paying $2 billion for Manus—matching the valuation Manus was reportedly seeking for its next funding round.

At that price, Meta is effectively buying a fast-scaling, revenue-generating AI product rather than a purely speculative research bet. The acquisition also aligns with CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s broader strategy of positioning Meta’s long-term future around AI, from infrastructure to consumer-facing experiences.

Why Manus is strategically appealing to Meta right now

Meta’s interest in Manus is particularly notable in the context of mounting scrutiny around large-scale AI spending. The company has been investing aggressively in infrastructure, and investors have grown increasingly uneasy about Meta’s $60 billion infrastructure spending spree. Across the tech sector, similarly massive, debt-backed spending on data center construction has raised questions about timelines for payoff and the near-term impact on margins.

Against that backdrop, Manus offers something comparatively rare in today’s AI market: a product already producing meaningful subscription revenue. Even if $100 million-plus in annual recurring revenue is small relative to Meta’s scale, it’s a concrete signal that some AI agent experiences can support a paid model—potentially helping Meta justify broader investment and accelerate its roadmap with a product that has already demonstrated demand.

AI agents vs. chatbots: what’s different?

While many consumer AI features today look like chatbots—users type prompts and receive responses—agent-style products are typically positioned as capable of executing multi-step tasks. In practice, “agents” often combine reasoning, tool use, and workflow orchestration. The Manus demo examples—candidate screening, vacation planning, and portfolio analysis—fit this framing: tasks that usually involve multiple decisions, sources of information, and intermediate outputs.

Meta already offers a chatbot-style experience through Meta AI. Adding Manus’ agent capabilities could broaden the range of things users can ask Meta’s AI to do, and potentially increase usage across Meta’s ecosystem.

What Meta says will happen next: independent operations and deeper integration

Meta says it will keep Manus running independently, while also weaving Manus’ AI agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Those are among the most widely used consumer apps in the world, and Meta AI is already available within them.

Keeping Manus independent could help preserve the startup’s velocity and product identity while Meta integrates the underlying capabilities into its platforms. At the same time, integration into Meta’s apps would give Manus access to an enormous distribution channel—an advantage many AI startups can’t replicate.

A geopolitical wrinkle: founders, Beijing origins, and U.S. scrutiny

The acquisition comes with a sensitive element. Manus’ Chinese founders created the startup’s parent company, Butterfly Effect, in Beijing in 2022 before moving to Singapore in the middle of this year. Whether that history attracts additional scrutiny in Washington remains to be seen, but the company has already faced political attention.

Senator John Cornyn previously criticized Benchmark for investing in Manus, raising concerns back in May about American capital flowing to a Chinese concern. Cornyn, a Texas Republican and senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been one of Congress’ most vocal hawks on China and technology competition. The broader political climate is also relevant: being tough on China has become one of the few genuinely bipartisan issues in Congress.

Meta: no continuing Chinese ownership, and services will stop in China

Meta has already addressed these concerns publicly. The company told Nikkei Asia that Manus won’t maintain ties to Chinese investors after the acquisition and will no longer operate in China. As quoted by the outlet, a Meta spokesperson said: “There will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI following the transaction, and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China.”

That statement is notable for two reasons. First, it suggests Meta anticipates potential questions about ownership and influence. Second, it points to a clear operational change—discontinuing services and operations in China—that could affect Manus’ footprint, user base, and strategy going forward. In exchange, Manus gains the backing of one of the world’s largest consumer internet companies and a path to embed its agents into mainstream social and messaging products.

What this could mean for AI inside Meta’s apps

If Meta follows through on integrating Manus’ agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, users could see AI features evolve from “ask-and-answer” interactions toward more task-oriented experiences. That might include structured assistance for planning, analysis, and other multi-step needs that can be wrapped into a conversational interface.

For Meta, the challenge will be delivering these capabilities in a way that feels trustworthy, predictable, and easy to use—especially at the scale of its apps. Agentic AI can be powerful, but it can also raise new questions around accuracy, user control, and how much autonomy users want software to have when performing tasks.

Conclusion

Meta’s acquisition of Manus highlights a growing shift in the AI market: attention is moving from flashy demos to products that can attract paying subscribers at scale. With a reported $2 billion price tag, millions of users, and more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue, Manus gives Meta a revenue-generating agent platform to pair with its broader AI ambitions—while also forcing the company to navigate the geopolitical sensitivities that increasingly surround global AI development.

This article is based on reporting originally published by TechCrunch.

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Based on reporting originally published by TechCrunch. See the sources section below.

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