DETROIT — Meta buys artificial intelligence startup Manus as Facebook and Instagram owner continues aggressive push expand AI capabilities on their platforms.
The California tech giant declined to disclose financial details of the acquisition. But The Wall Street Journal reported that Meta closed a deal worth more than $2 billion.
Manus, a Singapore-based platform with some Chinese roots, launched its first “general purpose” AI agent earlier this year. The platform offers customers a paid subscription to use the technology for research, coding and other tasks.
“Manus already serves the daily needs of millions of users and businesses around the world,” Meta said in a statement Monday, adding that it plans to scale the service as Manus “will provide general purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including Meta AI.”
Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, added that joining Meta will allow the platform to “build a stronger and more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus operates or how decisions are made.” Manus has confirmed that it will continue to sell and manage subscriptions through its own app and website.
The platform has grown rapidly over the past year. Earlier this month, Manus announced that it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue just eight months after launch.
Some of Manus's original financial backers as reported included China's Tencent Holdings, ZhenFund and HSG. And the company that first launched the platform is Butterfly Effect, which also operates under the name monica.im, which was founded in China before moving to Singapore.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that the deal would leave “no Chinese ownership stake in Manus AI” and that the platform would also cease its services and operations in China. Manus confirmed it will continue to operate in Singapore, where the majority of its employees are based.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is pushing to renew its commercial efforts in artificial intelligence as the company faces stiff competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. In June the company made Investment of US$14.3 billion at artificial intelligence data company Scale and hired its CEO Alexander Wang to help lead the tech giant's “superintelligence” team.
