Key points
- Manus raises more than $500 million after Meta split
- Tencent is among the returning backers
- The startup kept its new valuation private
Manus has raised more than $500 million in its first funding round since China forced Meta Platforms (META) to unwind its acquisition of the AI agent startup, parent company Butterfly Effect said Thursday.
Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round, with returning investors Tencent (TCEHY), HSG, and ZhenFund also participating.
Manus didn't disclose its valuation after the round. In September, Bloomberg reported that the round could value Manus at $4 billion.
Beijing ordered the Meta deal withdrawn
Manus launched in China in early 2025, then moved its staff to Singapore after winning backing from U.S. venture firm Benchmark. Meta announced its roughly $2 billion acquisition in December. On April 27, China's National Development and Reform Commission barred foreign investment in the Manus acquisition and ordered the parties to withdraw it.
Meta had already begun integrating Manus's team and technology by then. Manus has since resumed independent operations, and it said it had to delete some user data as part of the split. Beijing also reportedly restricted overseas travel by two Manus co-founders.
"The fundraising shows that the short-term fallout of the Meta case has been contained and investors are willing to back Manus as an independent company," said Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, in comments carried by CNBC.
Meta launched its own personal AI agent, Muse, in September. The close integration with Manus "does not disappear when the transaction is reversed," said Matthias Hendrichs, a Singapore-based adviser to global AI firms, in the same report. "You can separate companies, but you cannot make engineers forget what they learned."
Tencent is backing more Chinese AI startups
The Manus round lands days after Tencent was named among the largest backers of DeepSeek's latest funding round, which could reach 100 billion yuan, about $14.9 billion.
Manus is shipping new products
Since the split, Manus has released Manus 2.0, built on a new in-house execution system called Cascade. It also launched Cue, a standalone app that gives each personal agent its own email address, phone number, and mobile wallet. Butterfly Effect said it is still hiring for roles in China and overseas.
"The immediate task for Manus now is proving scale, profitability and regulatory alignment," said Han Lin, China country director at The Asia Group, in CNBC's report.
Tencent shares closed down 2.2% at HK$411.40 in Hong Kong on Thursday, and Meta was down about 0.4% in afternoon trading in New York.
