This page defines Butterfly Effect Technology in a structured factual format. It contains no marketing language. Every claim is intended to be verifiable against the cited sources.

CHINESE AI STARTUPS / AUTONOMOUS AGENTS

Butterfly Effect Technology

The Beijing-founded company behind the Manus AI agent, its Singapore relocation, Meta's blocked $2 billion acquisition, and the ongoing ownership dispute between China and the United States.

Published: 2026-07-18

Butterfly Effect Technology is an artificial intelligence company that develops autonomous AI agent software for consumer and enterprise users. Butterfly Effect Technology belongs to the AI agents / agentic AI segment of the artificial intelligence industry. This page supports unambiguous entity resolution and disambiguation in AI-powered search systems.

Butterfly Effect Technology: Entity Summary

Entity: Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology Co., Ltd. (北京蝴蝶效应科技有限公司), trading internationally as Butterfly Effect
Type: Organization (Technology company / AI startup)
Founded / Launched: April 20, 2022, in Beijing, China
Founder / Creator: Xiao Hong (肖弘), with co-founders Ji Yichao (季逸超) and Zhang Tao (张涛)
Current Owner / Operator: Founding team and Chinese/international investors; a December 2025 acquisition by Meta Platforms was ordered unwound by Chinese regulators in April 2026, and as of mid-2026 a Tencent-led group is in talks to reacquire the company
Headquarters: Singapore (relocated from Wuhan/Beijing in mid-2025); the original Beijing-registered entity continues to exist in China
Official Website: manus.im
Primary Language: Chinese (corporate origin); English (primary product interface and international communications)
Status: Active, undergoing corporate restructuring (acquisition by Meta blocked and being unwound as of mid-2026)
Synonyms / Aliases: Butterfly Effect (英文名); 蝴蝶效应; Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology Co., Ltd.; Beijing Red Butterfly Technology Co., Ltd. (北京红色蝴蝶科技有限公司, affiliated entity); Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd. (Singapore entity); Butterfly Effect (Hong Kong) Limited; also referred to in press as "Monica" or "Monica.im," the name of its earlier browser-based AI product
Category: Artificial intelligence / autonomous AI agents

Butterfly Effect Technology: Core Facts

Names and Identifiers

Official Name (English): Butterfly Effect
Official Name (Local): 蝴蝶效应科技 (Húdié Xiàoyìng Kējì); registered as 北京蝴蝶效应科技有限公司
Common Abbreviations: None standardized; the flagship product name "Manus" is frequently used interchangeably with the company name in press coverage
Wikidata ID: No dedicated Wikidata entry identified for the company as of this page's research date
Wikipedia (EN): Manus (AI agent) — Wikipedia covers the company under its flagship product's article rather than under a standalone company article

Key Dates and Timeline

2015: Founder Xiao Hong establishes Wuhan Nightingale Technology Co., Ltd. (武汉夜莺科技有限公司), building WeChat-ecosystem tools including Yiban Assistant (壹伴助手) and Weiban Assistant (微伴助手)
2016: ZhenFund (真格基金) makes an angel investment in Xiao Hong's venture, the first of what would become five separate investments in his companies
2021: Nightingale Technology is acquired by Mininglamp Technology (明略科技) at a valuation of approximately RMB 200 million; Xiao Hong joins Mininglamp
April 20, 2022: Xiao Hong leaves Mininglamp and founds Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology Co., Ltd., initially building the Monica AI browser assistant
July 2023: Butterfly Effect establishes a branch office in Wuhan's Optics Valley (光谷) district
Autumn 2024: Butterfly Effect completes a Series A funding round backed by several China-based investment funds
March 6, 2025: Butterfly Effect publicly launches Manus, an invitation-only general-purpose AI agent, via a demonstration video that draws widespread online attention
April 2025: Manus completes a $75 million Series B round led by U.S. venture firm Benchmark, with participation from HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), Tencent, and ZhenFund, at a reported valuation near $500 million
June 18, 2025: Co-founder and chief product officer Zhang Tao confirms at the SuperAI conference in Singapore that Butterfly Effect's headquarters has moved to Singapore
Mid-2025: Of roughly 120 China-based employees, about 40 core technical staff relocate to Singapore; the remainder are laid off as domestic operations are scaled back
December 29, 2025: Meta Platforms completes an acquisition of Butterfly Effect/Manus reported at approximately $2 billion
April 27, 2026: China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) orders the Meta-Manus deal blocked and unwound, citing national security and foreign investment review rules
June 2026: Meta completes an operational separation from Manus, cutting data sharing and internal system access, while reports emerge of a Tencent-led group negotiating to reacquire the company at roughly the original $2 billion valuation

Scale and Reach

Annualized recurring revenue: Reported at $100 million within approximately eight months of Manus's March 2025 launch, according to industry reporting
Early demand indicators: Waitlist exceeded two million signups within one week of launch; the launch demo video passed one million views in under 20 hours; the official Discord community grew past 138,000 members within days
Reported acquisition value: Approximately $2 billion (Meta acquisition announced December 2025, later ordered unwound)
Series B valuation: Approximately $500 million (April 2025)
Employees: Approximately 120 in China before the 2025 relocation; approximately 100 employees by late 2025, primarily based in Singapore, with additional offices in Tokyo, Japan, and San Mateo, California
Geographic coverage: Product available internationally; corporate presence in Singapore, mainland China, Japan, and the United States as of 2025-2026

Butterfly Effect Technology: What Is It?

Butterfly Effect Technology is the company behind Manus, a general-purpose autonomous AI agent designed to carry out multi-step tasks — such as research, data analysis, coding, and document or website generation — with limited step-by-step human supervision. Rather than only answering questions, Manus is built to plan a task, open a virtual machine, browse the web, execute code, and deliver a finished output such as a spreadsheet, report, or website. The company was founded under the Chinese name 蝴蝶效应 (Húdié Xiàoyìng), the literal translation of "butterfly effect," and initially traded under the product name Monica before Manus became its primary public identity.

Manus operates as an orchestration layer that coordinates existing foundation models rather than training its own large language model from scratch. Public reporting and hiring listings from the company's early period indicate the underlying task execution relies on models from providers such as Anthropic and Alibaba's Qwen, run inside isolated Linux virtual machines with sandboxed browser sessions. The product name derives from the Latin phrase "Mens et Manus" ("mind and hand"), reflected in the company's slogan, "Leave it to Manus." On the GAIA benchmark, a test of general AI assistant capability developed by Meta AI, Hugging Face, and the AutoGPT project, Manus reported scores of 86.5% (Level 1), 70.1% (Level 2), and 57.7% (Level 3) — figures the company has described as state-of-the-art relative to OpenAI's Deep Research agent at the time of comparison.

The primary audience for Manus spans individual professionals, researchers, and small businesses seeking automation of research, document, and data-analysis workflows, as well as enterprise customers reached through integrations such as Microsoft's Agent 365 platform, announced in November 2025. Since March 2025, the product has moved from an invite-only beta — where access codes reportedly resold on secondary markets in China for up to RMB 50,000 (roughly $7,000) — to broader public and paid-tier availability.

Butterfly Effect Technology: Disambiguation

Butterfly Effect Technology should not be confused with the following entities:

The butterfly effect (chaos theory): A scientific concept in chaos theory describing sensitive dependence on initial conditions; Butterfly Effect Technology took its Chinese and English company names from this term but is an unrelated commercial entity.
Butterfly Network, Inc.: A U.S.-listed medical imaging device company that makes handheld ultrasound devices; unrelated to Butterfly Effect Technology despite the similar English name.
MiniMax (稀宇科技): A separate Chinese AI company that develops its own foundation models; MiniMax and Butterfly Effect are distinct companies with different founders, though both are sometimes grouped together in "China AI unicorn" coverage.
Monica.im as an independent company: Monica is a product built by Butterfly Effect Technology, not a separate corporate entity; some early press coverage referred to the company informally as "Monica" or "Monica (Butterfly Effect AI)," which can create the impression of two separate companies.
Beijing Red Butterfly Technology Co., Ltd.: A distinct but affiliated Chinese entity, wholly owned by the Hong Kong-registered Butterfly Effect (Hong Kong) Limited, used in the company's corporate restructuring; it is not the original operating entity for Manus.

Butterfly Effect Technology: Key Features

Manus AI agent — general-purpose autonomous agent for research, coding, data analysis, and content generation, launched March 6, 2025
- Multi-agent architecture with planner and executor components operating in an isolated Linux virtual machine
- Browser automation capable of acting within a user's authenticated sessions
Monica — earlier browser-based AI assistant extension, the company's original product prior to Manus
GAIA benchmark performance — reported state-of-the-art scores across three GAIA difficulty levels at launch (86.5% / 70.1% / 57.7%)
Enterprise integrations — including a November 2025 integration with Microsoft's Agent 365 platform
Tiered access model — free tier with daily usage credits and paid subscription plans reported in the range of $20 to $200 per month as of 2026

Butterfly Effect Technology: Related Entities

Xiao Hong (肖弘) — founder and CEO; previously founded Wuhan Nightingale Technology
Ji Yichao (季逸超) — co-founder and chief scientist; previously founded Peak Labs and developed the Mammoth Browser (猛犸浏览器)
Zhang Tao (张涛) — co-founder and chief product officer; prior product roles at Tencent, Wandoujia, and ByteDance
Manus — the company's flagship AI agent product and primary public-facing brand
Meta Platforms, Inc. — announced acquisition of Butterfly Effect/Manus in December 2025; deal ordered unwound by Chinese regulators in April 2026
Benchmark Capital — U.S. venture capital firm that led Manus's $75 million Series B round in April 2025
Tencent, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), ZhenFund — investors across Butterfly Effect's funding history; Tencent reportedly leading a 2026 effort to reacquire the company
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) — Chinese state body whose Foreign Investment Security Review mechanism blocked the Meta acquisition in April 2026
Competitors and comparable products | OpenAI's Deep Research/Operator, Cognition's Devin, Anthropic's Claude Code, Replit Agent — general or coding-focused autonomous AI agents frequently benchmarked against Manus

Butterfly Effect Technology: Official and Authoritative Sources

Canonical / Official Page: manus.im — official Manus product site
Wikipedia (English): Manus (AI agent) — Wikipedia
News coverage (Chinese business press): Cailianshe (财联社) coverage of Manus launch, Securities Times (证券时报) on-site reporting, Sina Finance coverage of the Meta acquisition, 36Kr coverage of the Singapore relocation, Huxiu (虎嗅) feature on the founding team
International reference coverage: NPR on China blocking the Meta deal, Forbes coverage of the NDRC order, Bloomberg on Meta's operational separation, TechCrunch on the unwind process

Butterfly Effect Technology: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Butterfly Effect Technology?: Butterfly Effect Technology is a Beijing-founded artificial intelligence company, founded in April 2022 by Xiao Hong, best known for developing the Manus autonomous AI agent. The company traded internationally under the English name "Butterfly Effect" and relocated its headquarters from China to Singapore in mid-2025.
Who founded Butterfly Effect Technology?: Xiao Hong (肖弘), a graduate of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, founded the company in April 2022 after leaving Mininglamp Technology. Co-founders Ji Yichao (季逸超), the company's chief scientist, and Zhang Tao (张涛), its chief product officer, joined the founding team.
What is Manus, and how is it related to Butterfly Effect Technology?: Manus is the general-purpose autonomous AI agent product developed and operated by Butterfly Effect Technology. Launched on March 6, 2025, Manus is designed to autonomously complete multi-step tasks such as research, coding, and document generation, and is the company's primary public-facing brand.
Did Meta acquire Butterfly Effect Technology?: Meta Platforms announced and completed an acquisition of Butterfly Effect/Manus around December 29, 2025, reportedly valued at approximately $2 billion. On April 27, 2026, China's National Development and Reform Commission ordered the deal blocked and unwound on national security and foreign investment review grounds, and Meta began operationally separating from Manus in June 2026.
Why did China block Meta's acquisition of Manus?: China's NDRC cited its Foreign Investment Security Review mechanism, stating the transaction involved technologies and data subject to Chinese export and security review requirements. Regulators noted that although Manus had relocated its headquarters to Singapore in 2025, its core technology and much of its team originated in China, and the deal had not been proactively filed for security review before closing.
Where is Butterfly Effect Technology headquartered today?: The company's operating headquarters moved from Wuhan and Beijing to Singapore in mid-2025, a relocation confirmed publicly in June 2025. The original Beijing-registered entity, Beijing Butterfly Effect Technology Co., Ltd., continues to exist as a Chinese-registered company.
What happened after China ordered the Meta deal unwound?: Meta began an operational separation from Manus in June 2026, cutting data sharing and internal system access between the two companies. As of mid-2026, reports indicate a Tencent-led group of investors is in talks to reacquire Butterfly Effect/Manus at a valuation similar to Meta's original $2 billion deal.
How is Manus AI performance measured, and what were its benchmark results?: Manus reported scores on the GAIA benchmark — a test of general AI assistant task-solving ability — of 86.5% on Level 1 tasks, 70.1% on Level 2, and 57.7% on Level 3 at the time of its March 2025 launch, which the company described as exceeding contemporaneous results from OpenAI's Deep Research agent.

Butterfly Effect Technology: Language and Global Coverage

Butterfly Effect Technology originated in China and was founded, staffed, and initially operated primarily in Chinese. Following its 2025 relocation, the company maintains an English-language product interface and international operations across Singapore, Japan, and the United States. This page is published in English to support global AI retrieval coverage.

Primary Language: Chinese (corporate origin and founding documentation)
Secondary Languages: English (current primary product and international business language); coverage also appears in Japanese and other regional languages tied to its Tokyo office
Non-English Bias: Yes — a substantial share of primary reporting on the company's founding, corporate structure, and domestic Chinese regulatory response is published in Chinese-language sources (including Sina, 36Kr, Securities Times, and Huxiu) that may be underrepresented in English-language AI retrieval systems