On September 1, general-purpose AI agent company Manus officially announced its resumption of independent operations. The founding team—comprising founder Xiao Hong, chief scientist Ji Yichao, and co-founder Zhang Tao—will continue to lead the company, while Tencent has become its largest single shareholder through an equity buyback.

Event Recap

Manus burst onto the scene in March 2025 as the "world's first general-purpose AI agent," capable of autonomously completing complex tasks such as booking tickets, data analysis, and code writing. Its closed beta invitation codes once traded for tens of thousands of yuan. The following month, Manus secured a $75 million funding round led by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Benchmark, with its valuation soaring to $500 million.

On December 30 of the same year, Meta announced the acquisition of Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, for approximately $2 billion, with founder Xiao Hong originally slated to become Meta's vice president. However, on April 27, 2026, the transaction was formally blocked by the Office of the Foreign Investment Security Review Working Mechanism under the NDRC. This marked the first publicly announced prohibition of a foreign acquisition in the AI sector since the implementation of the Measures for the Security Review of Foreign Investment. The regulator ordered both parties to revoke the arrangement and restore the original status.

Resumption of Independent Operations

Against this backdrop, Tencent, together with existing shareholders including ZhenFund and Sequoia China, repurchased all shares from Meta at the original $2 billion valuation. Notably, Benchmark, the former largest shareholder, did not participate in the buyback, with its stake taken over by Tencent. Following the transaction, although Tencent is the largest single shareholder, it retains a minority stake. Manus continues to operate independently from its Singapore headquarters and will not be integrated into Tencent's corporate structure.

Post-independence, Manus has outlined three strategic directions: deeper integration into daily workflows, more direct interaction with the world around users, and more proactive action on behalf of users.

Previously, on August 11, Manus published A Letter to Our Users regarding data migration arrangements. Due to compliance requirements, data generated by some users on and after December 29, 2025—the date of the acquisition—was cleared between August 23 and 24. Users were able to back up their data in advance and resume access from August 25 onward. The company emphasized that this arrangement was unrelated to any data breach and offered fee reductions and return incentives to affected users. The data recovery channel remains open, while unaffected users need take no action.

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