Mark Zuckerberg has made another major move. Meta Platforms is set to acquire Manus, a Singapore-based AI startup that captured Silicon Valley's attention this spring with a remarkably polished demo video that spread rapidly online. The video demonstrated an AI agent capable of screening job applicants, organizing travel, and evaluating investment portfolios. At its launch, Manus asserted its technology surpassed OpenAI's Deep Research.

By April, merely weeks after its debut, the early-stage company secured a $75 million funding round led by Benchmark, achieving a post-money valuation of $500 million. General partner Chetan Puttagunta took a seat on the board. Several prominent investors had already backed Manus by that point, including Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (previously known as Sequoia China).

While questions arose when Manus began charging $39 or $199 monthly for access to its AI models—with observers noting the pricing appeared ambitious for a service still in testing—the company recently reported signing up millions of users and surpassing $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

This success reportedly triggered negotiations with Meta. According to reports, Meta is paying approximately $2 billion, matching the valuation Manus was targeting for its subsequent funding round. For Zuckerberg, who has heavily committed Meta's future to artificial intelligence, Manus offers a novel asset: a profitable AI product. This comes as investors express growing concern over Meta's massive $60 billion infrastructure expenditure.

Meta states it will maintain Manus as an independent operation while integrating its AI agents into Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, platforms where Meta's own chatbot, Meta AI, is already accessible.

However, a notable complication exists. Manus, launched just eight months ago, was founded by Chinese entrepreneurs who established its parent company, Butterfly Effect, in Beijing in 2022 before relocating to Singapore mid-year. Whether this background triggers regulatory scrutiny in Washington is uncertain, but Senator John Cornyn has already criticized Benchmark for its investment. In a May post on X, he questioned who believed it was "a good idea for American investors to subsidize our biggest adversary in AI, only to have the CCP use that technology to challenge us economically and militarily. Not me."

Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has consistently been one of Congress's most outspoken figures on China and technology competition, though he is not alone. Adopting a firm stance toward China has evolved into a genuinely bipartisan issue in Congress.

In response, Meta has already informed Nikkei Asia that following the acquisition, Manus will sever all connections with Chinese investors and cease its operations in China. A Meta spokesperson confirmed, "There will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests in Manus AI following the transaction, and Manus AI will discontinue its services and operations in China."