Manus AI Raises Half a Billion After Meta Deal Dies

Manus AI is back on its own feet — and richer than the deal that nearly swallowed it. The AI agent startup said this week it has raised more than 500 million dollars in new funding, according to AFP reporting carried by TechXplore, in its first financing round since its founders and investors bought the company back from Meta.

The buyout — a roughly two billion dollar agreement announced last December — was ordered unwound by China's economic planners in the spring. Now Manus AI is reportedly worth around four billion dollars, about double what Meta had offered, and it is rolling out products that compete head to head with Meta's own personal agent, according to reporting by Tech Startups.

Manus AI, whose parent company is Butterfly Effect, builds agent software that can carry out real-world tasks for users, from conducting research and building websites to booking restaurants and making phone calls, as reported by AFP. It is a hot sector in global tech, with AI labs racing to release personal assistants that do things rather than just answer questions.

The Manus AI comeback story, in four acts

Act one: last December, Manus and Meta announced the acquisition, valued at roughly two billion dollars, one of the biggest purchases in the Facebook owner's history, according to AFP reporting carried by the Berliner Tageblatt. Act two: this past April, China's National Development and Reform Commission decided the deal must be unwound, with authorities reportedly even restricting overseas travel by two of the startup's co-founders. The move signaled Beijing's desire for greater control over homegrown tech, according to analysts cited by AFP.

Act three: in September, Manus AI said it had resumed independent operations after unwinding the Meta acquisition. That same month it launched a major update to its agent tool, dubbed Manus 2.0 and built on its proprietary Cascade execution system, plus a standalone personal-agent app called Cue. Act four: this week's raise, led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing backers Tencent, HSG Capital and ZhenFund also participating — and talk of a Hong Kong listing reportedly on the table, according to the outlet's report.

Manus AI versus Muse: the agent wars are heating up

The new app, Cue, lets users create their own personal AI agents for tasks such as booking restaurants and making phone calls, as reported by AFP — a direct parallel to Meta's new personal agent tool Muse, which has sparked investor excitement as an opportunity to generate revenue beyond advertising. Cue goes further in one respect: its agents can get their own email addresses, phone numbers and mobile wallets, allowing them to interact with outside services on a user's behalf, according to the outlet's account.

Manus AI is not just chasing personal assistants either. The company has been pushing into vibe-coding tools as well as design and video generation, putting it in the same arena as startups like Cursor, Lovable and Replit. And it is far from the only agent story making waves: GenZ NewZ recently covered OpenAI's always-on Dots agents, another sign that the whole industry is pivoting from chatbots to software that keeps working after the conversation ends. More on the beat lives at the AI news topic page.

What the Manus AI saga means for everyone else

For regular users, the takeaway is simple: the personal AI agent is becoming a real consumer product, not a research demo. Agents with their own inboxes, phone numbers and wallets could soon be booking your table, calling the plumber and managing your calendar while you sleep — the "software that does things" future investors are betting becomes a major software category, as reported by the outlet.

The business numbers back up the hype. Manus AI's annualized revenue run rate had climbed to several hundred million dollars by midyear, up roughly fivefold from where it stood when Meta came calling, as reported by the tech outlet, citing The Information. That kind of growth is why investors are willing to value the company at roughly double the blocked buyout price.

Still, analysts urge some caution. "The fundraising shows that the short-term fallout of the Meta case has been contained," said Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, according to the publication, while noting renewed confidence in the commercial potential of AI agents. The company has also said it is forming teams to "develop products for the domestic market," as reported by AFP — a reminder that its future still runs through Beijing. The real test now is whether Manus AI can keep growing profitably without tripping over new regulatory obstacles.