Meta's $2B Chinese AI Prize: Manus Secured

0:00Meta 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 chat GPTGPTagents and a lot of these other browsers are being able to accomplish to buy Manus AI. 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. Before we get into all of that, I wanted to say a big thank you to today's sponsor, which is Delve. If compliance is something that is slowing down your deal, then Delve is an amazing product for you, whether you're working with SOC2, HIPAA, GDPR, the screenshots, the spreadsheets, all of the endless back and forth can be a lot of work.

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1:27zuckerberg has struck again that's the headline over on tech crunch i think is hilarious but what's interesting here meta platforms are going to acquire manis 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, you know, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a Beijing AI startup wasn't, you know, the most trendy thing.

2:05So 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.

2:50So 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. And apparently since then, they have signed up millions of users, and they have annual recurring revenues of more than$100 million 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.

3:26So, you know, essentially they go and raise 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 being 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.

3:57So 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, million dollars is nothing compared to what um what meta is doing right now but i also think this is a really useful tool right we have open ai we have clod or anthropic we have google we have all of these players that are coming out with these um you know the software and this technology that can kind of do tasks for you these agent tasks and even 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.

4:42It 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 kind of the broader tech industry's 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.

5:19And Meta does not, they're just kind of like, well, at the end of the day, you know, 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.

5:49They 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. They said that Meta's own chatbot, Meta AI, is already available to users on all those different platforms. And so they're going to just incorporate a bunch of Manus stuff. Manus is interesting. It can go and 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. And I think it's a great buy, especially if they want to get into any sort of enterprise software, which I know really isn't their target audience.

6:24People do use it as well. This is where the 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 in 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. 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 is 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 dollars 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 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's just concerned about American money going to China, basically.

7:24He'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.

8:02So 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.

8:33That was a 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, we'll 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.

9:00But it's also very popular in the United States. I hear a lot of people talk about Manasseh. In fact, I've heard people you know, when there was all of the drama around DeepSeek and everyone's saying, oh no, there's like this Chinese AI and it's going to gobble up all of the data of the Americans. I did hear a lot of people say, okay, well, there's also Manus that no one is talking about. There's a Chinese company and it's becoming very popular. So look out for Manus as well. So 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.

9:32So 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's 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, they're, 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.

10:04And I do think it's a great piece of technology. So I'll be interested to see how this gets incorporated and rolled out. Thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. If you enjoyed the episode, make sure to go check out the sponsor of today's episode, which is delve.com. There's a link in the description for all of your compliance needs. And as always, make sure to leave a rating and review and check out AI box.ai, my very own AI startup where you can build tools without knowing how to code, teleprompt an AI and it will build the tool for you. Thanks so much for tuning in and I'll catch you in the next episode.