Meta Stock Rises After Buying Manus. What the China-Founded AI Start-Up Brings.

Meta Platforms is investing tens of billion in artificial-intelligence initiatives. (KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)

Key Points

• Meta Platforms is acquiring artificial-intelligence start-up Manus. The Wall Street Journal said the price is more than $2 billion.
• Manus, originally a Chinese AI company, moved its headquarters to Singapore in April. It shelved plans for a product to be offered in the Chinese market.
• Manus achieved over $100 million in annual recurring revenue in December, eight months after its launch.

Meta Platforms has agreed to acquire artificial-intelligence start-up Manus. It’s a surprise move to buy a company that was once one of the brightest lights in China’s AI sector but could boost the social-media platform’s offering in the hot area of autonomous agents.

Meta is buying Manus for more than $2 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the acquisition. Meta declined to comment on the value of the deal.

Manus made a splash in March when it previewed an AI agent—a program capable of taking simple instructions and performing multistep tasks autonomously—that could produce detailed research reports and build custom websites. At the time it was seen as another example of China’s AI prowess, coming on the heels of the release of the DeepSeek model. The parent company behind Manus, Butterfly Effect, was founded in 2022 and had offices in Beijing and Wuhan.

Since then the company has undergone some radical changes. In April, Manus raised $75 million in a fundraising round led by venture firm Benchmark and officially moved its headquarters to Singapore as it distances itself from China. Manus also has shelved its plan to develop a version of its product for the Chinese market, the Journal reported.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is spending freely in an effort to keep up with the advances of AI rivals such as OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, and Alphabet’ s Google. He said earlier this year that it was “quite possible” his company could invest more than a planned $600 billion in the U.S. through 2028 if AI progress keeps accelerating

Meta went on a hiring spree this year for a new division named Superintelligence Labs to develop the next generation of models. The unit is led by Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, a data-labeling start-up in which Meta acquired a 49% share for $14 billion.

By those standards, the Manus acquisition is coming with a relatively small price tag. But until now Meta hasn’t made any notable moves in the AI agent space, which is expected to expand in 2026.

Manus could change that. The start-up crossed $100 million in annual recurring revenue in December, eight months after it launched, and has millions of users.

Meta’s Wang noted in a social-media post late on Monday that Manus is the top performing AI on Scale AI’s Remote Labor Index, designed to measure the capability of AI agents to perform remote work in the real world.

“Our solution is driving value for millions of users worldwide today. With time, we hope to expand this subscription to the millions of businesses and billions of people on Meta’s platforms,” Manus said in a statement on its website.

Meta shares were up 1.4% in early trading. The stock has risen 13% this year so far through Monday’s close, lagging behind the 18% gain for the S&P 500 index.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com