Why Meta acquired Manus and what it means for its personal superintelligence push

Manus, the Singapore-based AI agent developer, has been acquired by Meta for an undisclosed sum, as the social media giant steps up spending to close the gap with rivals such as Google and OpenAI.

Originally founded in China, Manus has since shifted its base to Singapore and earlier this year, rolled out its general-purpose AI agent – LLM-powered systems that can autonomously navigate the web and complete tasks on behalf of the user. Manus is part of the new wave of Chinese AI startups that emerged in the wake of DeepSeek’s triumph, drawing attention for developing AI agents capable of executing complex tasks such as market research, coding, and data analysis.

Meta’s acquisition of Manus is aimed at accelerating AI innovation for businesses and integrating advanced automation into its consumer and enterprise products, including its Meta AI assistant, the social media giant said in a statement on Monday, December 29.

The takeover will not affect Manus’ paid customers as the startup will continue operating its subscription service without disruption. Meta also said that Manus employees will be folded into its teams, with the tech giant having aggressively poached AI talent from startups and major rivals, including OpenAI and Google, this year.

Meta’s move to snap up Manus fits squarely into its broader strategy of using its financial firepower to scoop up talent and buy capabilities in order to gain an edge over its rivals in the AI arms race.

At the start of December 2025, Meta announced – without disclosing the amount – that it has acquired an AI-wearables startup called Limitless (formerly Rewind) that developed an AI-powered pendant to record users’ conversations.

However, its bigger bet came in June when the Mark Zuckerberg-led company invested over $14.3 billion in Scale AI and simultaneously hired Alexandr Wang and other employees of the data labelling startup to be part of its newly established Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) – a separate unit within the company that has been tasked with spearheading Zuckerberg’s aim of creating ‘personal superintelligence’. Coined by the CEO himself, personal superintelligence is used to refer to AI systems that could eventually surpass human capabilities.

One key distinction between the Meta-Scale AI deal and its purchases of Manus and Limitless is that the former fit a wave of acqui-hires that swept through the tech industry this year, with big tech companies looking to secure AI talent and assets in lateral moves rather than the traditional, full-scale takeovers.

Commenting on the acquisition, Meta said, “Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide…We plan to scale this service to many more businesses.” “Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, said in a press release.

Manus’ roots can be traced back to a Chinese startup called Butterfly Effect, also known as Monica.Im, before it was spun off and became a standalone company. The startup first grabbed headlines with the launch of its general-purpose AI agent that is capable of autonomously carrying out web-based tasks such as creating trip itineraries in response to basic prompts.

“Behind every Manus session runs a dedicated cloud-based virtual machine, allowing users to orchestrate complex cloud workloads — simply by talking to an agent,” as per the company. “From generating tailored rental presentations to safely evaluating cutting-edge open-source projects in a secure sandbox, the Turing-completeness of the virtual machine is what gives Manus its generality — and opens the door to endless creative possibilities,” it said.

Manus said that it has processed more than 147 trillion tokens of text and data so far, and currently runs over 80 million cloud-based virtual computers on top of its large-scale virtualization infrastructure and ‘highly efficient’ agent architecture which reportedly took “months of optimisation”.

The company made another splash in the crowded AI product market by claiming that its Wide Research tool surpassed OpenAI’s DeepResearch toolin terms of performance. It also developed its own AI video generator. Manus’ AI agent and other products are reportedly powered by LLMs developed by other tech companies.

In March 2025, Manus announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba’s Qwen AI.

Amid rising geopolitical tensions between the United States and China in July this year, Manus shifted its operations from China to Singapore, Tokyo, and San Mateo in California. It does not offer its AI products and tools in China, according to a report by Bloomberg. Before moving its headquarters to Singapore, Manus reportedly laid off most of its staff in Beijing.

In October 2025, Microsoft began testing Manus’ AI agent in Windows 11 PCs, allowing users to create websites from local files.

The AI startup raised $75 million in a Series B funding round led by US venture firm Benchmark. Its early investors include Chinese tech giants such as Tencent as well as HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund. The company claimed it had achieved an annualised average revenue of more than $100 million eight months after launch, while its revenue run rate exceeded $125 million.