Meta Platforms has agreed to acquire Manus, an artificial intelligence agent developed by a startup founded in China but now headquartered in Singapore, the companies said on Monday, as the Facebook owner accelerates its push into advanced AI technologies.
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Manus was created by Butterfly Effect, a startup whose AI agent is designed to autonomously perform complex tasks rather than simply respond to prompts like conventional chatbots. According to the company’s website, Manus can independently sift through and summarise job applications, analyse data and even build functional websites, such as platforms for stock analysis.
Meta said the acquisition would help it scale AI agents across its ecosystem, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Woah! Manus the amazing AI agent that crossed $100M in ARR eight months after launch just got acquired by Meta.
Lot’s of people don’t talk about Meta because they aren’t dominating the foundation model layer (like OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and XAI are)
But now Meta is… pic.twitter.com/aI7fi2s5kS
— Alex Mathew (@alxmthew) December 29, 2025
“This will bring a leading agent to billions of people and unlock opportunities for businesses across our products,” Meta said in a statement, highlighting the growing importance of AI agents that can act, create and deliver results for users.
Manus chief executive Xiao Hong described the deal as a major step forward for the technology. “The era of AI that doesn’t just talk, but acts, creates, and delivers, is only beginning,” he said, adding that partnering with Meta would allow the company to build at a scale previously unimaginable.
Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has made artificial intelligence a central pillar of the company’s future strategy. The company has spent billions of dollars on AI-related acquisitions, recruitment of specialised engineers and the construction of large-scale data centres to support more powerful models and products.
However, analysts cautioned that the acquisition could face regulatory hurdles amid intensifying technological rivalry between the United States and China. Bloomberg Intelligence analysts said the deal was likely aimed at expanding Meta’s AI agent capabilities and could be valued at more than $2 billion.
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They added that scrutiny was possible because Manus, while now based in Singapore, was founded in China, at a time when regulators are increasingly sensitive to cross-border technology transfers and data security concerns.