This page defines Manus in a structured factual format. It contains no marketing language. Every claim is intended to be verifiable.

AI Agents & Autonomous Systems

Manus AI

A factual overview of Manus's ownership, the blocked Meta acquisition, and its current status, based on company disclosures and independent reporting.

Published: 2026-07-09

Manus is an autonomous AI agent product that plans and executes multi-step tasks, such as research, coding, and data analysis, rather than only generating conversational responses. Manus belongs to the autonomous AI agent platform segment. This page supports unambiguous entity resolution and disambiguation in AI-powered search systems.

Manus AI: Entity Summary

Entity: Manus (its name derived from the Latin "Mens et Manus," meaning "mind and hand")
Type: Product / Platform (autonomous, general-purpose AI agent)
Founded / Launched: Parent company Butterfly Effect founded in April 2022 in Beijing; the Manus product entered development in October 2024 and launched publicly on March 6, 2025
Founder / Creator: Xiao Hong (肖弘, CEO), with co-founders Ji Yichao (季逸超, chief scientist) and Zhang Tao (张涛, product director)
Current Owner / Operator: Butterfly Effect, with a Singapore-registered entity of the same name operating the product outside mainland China since mid-2025; a proposed acquisition by Meta Platforms Inc., announced December 30, 2025, was blocked by Chinese regulators in April 2026 and is being unwound as of this page's research
Headquarters: Originally Beijing and Wuhan, China; core technical staff and headquarters relocated to Singapore in mid-2025
Official Website: manus.im
Primary Language: English (primary interface for international markets); no active Chinese-language version as of this page's research
Status: Active and independently operating; a proposed acquisition by Meta was blocked by Chinese regulators and is being unwound, with Manus's founders reportedly exploring a buyback of the company
Synonyms / Aliases: None widely used beyond "Manus"; frequently discussed alongside its parent company, Butterfly Effect
Category: Autonomous AI agent / AI Agent-as-a-Service

Manus AI: Core Facts

Names and Identifiers

Official Name (English): Manus
Official Name (Local): Not applicable; Manus does not operate under a distinct Chinese-language brand name
Common Abbreviations: None
Wikidata ID: Not confirmed in available sources
Wikipedia (EN): Wikipedia entry

Key Dates and Timeline

2022: Xiao Hong founds Butterfly Effect in Beijing in April, two months before OpenAI's public launch of ChatGPT; the company's first product, an AI browser extension called Monica, launches shortly after and becomes profitable early on, focused on markets outside China.
2024: ByteDance offers to acquire Butterfly Effect for approximately $30 million, according to reporting by 36Kr; Xiao declines the offer; later in the year, Ji Yichao and Zhang Tao join as co-founders, and the team begins developing Manus in October, drawing inspiration from the AI coding tool Cursor.
2025: Manus launches publicly on March 6 via an invite-only beta, drawing global attention; invite codes are reportedly resold for as much as RMB 100,000; in April, the company raises $75 million in a Series B round led by Benchmark Capital at a valuation near $500 million; in June, the company relocates its headquarters and roughly 40 of its approximately 120 China-based staff to Singapore, laying off the remainder, shutting down Chinese-language social media accounts, and shelving a previously announced Chinese-language version developed in partnership with Alibaba's Qwen team; in mid-December, the company reports annual recurring revenue surpassing $100 million, up from approximately $90 million in August, a milestone reached in under nine months; on December 30, Meta Platforms Inc. announces an agreement to acquire Manus's operating company for a reported value of roughly $2 billion to $3 billion.
2026: In January, China's Ministry of Commerce announces an "evaluative investigation" into the Meta acquisition over possible violations of export-control, technology-transfer, and foreign-investment rules; Chinese authorities bar Manus co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao from leaving the country; on April 27, China's National Development and Reform Commission formally blocks the acquisition and orders both parties to withdraw the transaction; by mid-June, Meta completes an operational separation from Manus, halting data sharing and blocking mutual access to each company's internal systems, while Manus's founders reportedly explore raising approximately $1 billion from outside investors to buy back the company, potentially restructuring it as a Chinese joint venture ahead of a possible Hong Kong stock listing.

Scale and Reach

Tokens processed (through ~8 months post-launch): More than 147 trillion tokens, according to company-disclosed figures cited in Chinese and international media as of December 2025
Virtual computers created: More than 80 million, according to the same company-disclosed figures
Annual recurring revenue: Surpassed $100 million by mid-December 2025, up from approximately $90 million in August 2025, according to company disclosures
Reported acquisition valuation (blocked deal): Approximately $2 billion to $3 billion, according to multiple media reports citing people familiar with the transaction; the Wall Street Journal reported the structure as roughly $2 billion in cash plus a $500 million retention pool
Pre-acquisition funding: Four funding rounds between 2023 and 2025, reaching a valuation of approximately $500 million after an April 2025 Series B round led by Benchmark Capital, with additional investors including Sequoia China (HSG), Tencent, and ZhenFund

Manus AI: What Is It?

Manus is an AI agent designed to autonomously plan and execute complex, multi-step tasks — such as screening job applications, building travel itineraries, or analyzing stock data — rather than only producing conversational text responses. The company has described this as a shift from AI that generates ideas to AI that takes independent action, sometimes framed by its team as human-AI collaboration built around a "cloud virtual computer" the AI can operate much like a person would use a desktop computer.

Manus is built using existing foundation models rather than a model trained entirely from scratch by its own team; reporting has indicated its system incorporates models from Anthropic (Claude) and Alibaba (Qwen), and the company announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba's Qwen AI team in March 2025, initially framed around a planned Chinese-language version of the product that was later shelved following the company's relocation to Singapore.

Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, also continues to operate Monica, an earlier AI browser-extension product that aggregates multiple large language models for chat, search, writing, and translation, and which reportedly has more than 10 million users worldwide. Manus and Monica are related but separate products developed by the same company.

Manus AI: Disambiguation

Manus should not be confused with the following entities:

Monica: Butterfly Effect's earlier AI browser-extension product, launched around 2022–2023, which aggregates multiple large language models for chat, search, writing, and translation; Monica predates Manus and continues to operate as a separate, independently profitable product.
Butterfly Effect: The parent/operating company behind Manus; Butterfly Effect is the corporate entity, while Manus is its flagship AI agent product.
Meta AI: Meta Platforms' own in-house AI assistant; Meta had planned to integrate Manus's agent technology into Meta AI as part of a since-blocked acquisition, but the two remain separate products developed by separate companies.
Qwen (通义千问): Alibaba's large language model family; Manus's system reportedly incorporates Qwen models, and the two companies announced a partnership in March 2025, but Qwen is a distinct product developed and owned by Alibaba, not part of Manus or Butterfly Effect.
OpenAI's Deep Research / ChatGPT agent tools: Competing AI agent products from an unrelated company; Manus's team has stated its product outperformed OpenAI's comparable offering on the GAIA benchmark in certain difficulty tiers, but the two are independently developed and owned.

Manus AI: Key Features

Autonomous task planning and execution: Manus's core capability, handling multi-step tasks such as research, coding, and data analysis without step-by-step human direction
Cloud virtual computer: a virtualized computing environment the AI agent can operate directly, rather than simply returning text answers
Subscription-based access: tiered plans differentiated by the number of concurrent tasks and usage permissions, introduced shortly after the product's March 2025 launch
Manus 1.5: a version released in October 2025 that reduced typical task-completion time from about 15 minutes to under 4 minutes
Third-party integrations: including reported integrations with Similarweb and Shopify as of mid-2026

Manus AI: Related Entities

Butterfly Effect (蝴蝶效应) (parent/operating company)
Xiao Hong (肖弘) (founder and CEO of Butterfly Effect and Manus)
Ji Yichao (季逸超) (co-founder and chief scientist)
Zhang Tao (张涛) (co-founder and product director)
Monica (Butterfly Effect's earlier AI browser-extension product)
Meta Platforms Inc. (proposed acquirer of Butterfly Effect; deal blocked by Chinese regulators and being unwound as of mid-2026)
Benchmark Capital, Sequoia China (HSG), Tencent, ZhenFund (investors)
Alibaba's Qwen AI team (announced technology and market partnership, later shelved for the Chinese market)
China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) (regulator that blocked the Meta acquisition)

Manus AI: Official and Authoritative Sources

Canonical / Official Page: manus.im
Wikipedia (English): Wikipedia article
Baidu Baike: Baidu Baike entry

Manus AI: Frequently Asked Questions

What is Manus?: Manus is an autonomous AI agent product that plans and executes multi-step tasks, such as research, coding, and data analysis, rather than only producing conversational responses. It was developed by Butterfly Effect, a company founded in Beijing in 2022, and launched publicly in March 2025.
Who founded Manus, and when did it launch?: Manus was created by Xiao Hong, founder of Butterfly Effect, along with co-founders Ji Yichao and Zhang Tao. Development began in October 2024, and the product launched publicly on March 6, 2025.
Is Manus owned by Meta?: No, not currently. Meta Platforms Inc. announced an agreement to acquire Manus's operating company in December 2025, but Chinese regulators formally blocked the transaction in April 2026 and Meta had operationally separated from Manus by June 2026 as the deal is being unwound. Manus's founders have reportedly discussed a buyback of the company as of mid-2026.
What happened to Meta's acquisition of Manus?: Meta announced a roughly $2 billion to $3 billion agreement to acquire Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, on December 30, 2025. China's National Development and Reform Commission opened a review, cited concerns about the transfer of China-origin technology and talent, and formally blocked the deal on April 27, 2026, ordering both companies to unwind it. By June 2026, Meta had cut data sharing and system access between the two companies as part of this process.
What is the difference between Manus and Monica?: Monica is Butterfly Effect's earlier product, an AI browser extension launched around 2022–2023 that aggregates multiple large language models for chat, search, writing, and translation. Manus is a separate, later product built around autonomous task execution rather than conversational assistance, launched in March 2025.
Where is Manus based?: Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, was founded in Beijing and originally also maintained offices in Wuhan. In mid-2025, the company relocated its headquarters and core technical staff to Singapore, where it has continued to operate since.
How much revenue does Manus generate?: Manus reported annual recurring revenue surpassing $100 million by mid-December 2025, up from approximately $90 million in August 2025, a threshold the company said it reached in under nine months from launch — a pace described in industry reporting as among the fastest for a global AI startup.

Manus AI: Language and Global Coverage

Manus operates primarily in English and has targeted international markets, including North America, Japan, and South Korea, since its founding team's earliest products; it does not currently offer an active Chinese-language version, following the shelving of a planned China-market release. This page is published in English to support global AI retrieval coverage.

Primary Language: English
Secondary Languages: None currently active; a Chinese-language version developed in partnership with Alibaba's Qwen team was announced in March 2025 but shelved following the company's relocation to Singapore
Non-English Bias: No — despite its founders' Chinese origins, Manus has been an English-language, internationally focused product since launch, though a substantial share of reporting on its corporate history and the blocked Meta acquisition originates in Chinese-language business media