Meta Platforms has made one of the boldest moves in its recent history, agreeing to acquire Manus, a Singapore-based Manus AI startup that has become the talk of Silicon Valley for its autonomous AI agents, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $2 billion.
The acquisition underlines Meta’s growing determination to move beyond chat‑based artificial intelligence and into systems that can plan, decide and act on their own a shift many experts see as the next big leap in AI development.
In April 2025, just weeks after its public 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 the startup’s board, giving Manus AI a powerful Silicon Valley backer as it scaled its autonomous agent platform.
Per Chinese media outlets, several major investors had already placed early bets on Manus AI at that point, including Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly known as Sequoia China) through a $10 million funding round — highlighting growing confidence in the commercial future of Manus AI.
The deal comes as Meta races to close the gap with rivals such as OpenAI, Google and Microsoft, all of whom are pouring billions into advanced AI research and infrastructure. By bringing Manus into its ecosystem, Meta gains a platform designed to handle complex, multi‑step tasks — the kind of work that usually requires human oversight — and the engineering talent behind it.
According to people familiar with the matter, Manus will be integrated into Meta’s expanding AI division, with a focus on enhancing Meta AI and future enterprise tools.
The company sees autonomous agents as a way to help users perform real‑world actions, such as organizing research, automating workflows, writing and testing code, and managing digital operations with minimal input.
That is when Meta began negotiating with Manus, according to the Wall Street Journal, which reports that the tech giant is paying about $2 billion — the valuation Manus AI was seeking for its next funding round.
For CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who has staked Meta’s future on artificial intelligence, Manus AI represents something new: an AI product that is already generating revenue.
This is especially significant at a time when investors have grown increasingly cautious about Meta’s roughly $60 billion infrastructure spending spree and the wider tech industry’s debt‑backed rush to build massive data centers.
The acquisition follows a series of investments by Meta aimed at strengthening its artificial intelligence capabilities, including upgrades to its own large language models and new developer tools.
For CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the Manus deal represents a strategic push toward AI systems that can actively perform tasks rather than simply generate content.
Manus has roots in China but relocated its headquarters to Singapore amid tightening U.S. scrutiny of Chinese‑linked technology firms. Its move helped position the company for global expansion and, ultimately, made it a more attractive acquisition target for U.S. tech giants.
Despite broader geopolitical tensions, the deal highlights how innovation in artificial intelligence continues to transcend borders, even as governments debate regulation, data security and national competitiveness.
Experts believe Meta’s bet on Manus AI could shape how consumers and businesses interact with artificial intelligence in the coming years, but it is unfolding under intensifying political scrutiny in Washington.
Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican and senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has long been one of Congress’s most vocal hawks on China and technology competition and he is far from alone, as taking a tough line on China has become a rare bipartisan consensus.
Autonomous agents powered by Manus AI could still become central to digital productivity handling research, customer support, scheduling, marketing operations and even parts of software development but lawmakers are expected to closely watch how advanced agent technologies are developed, deployed and secured across major U.S. platforms.