Manus, the AI agent startup, has raised more than $500 million in its first funding round since Meta was forced to abandon its $2 billion acquisition of the company, CNBC’s Anniek Bao reported on Oct. 8. Butterfly Effect, Manus’s parent company, announced the round.
Private equity firm Boyu Capital and venture investor IDG Capital led it, with follow-on investment from existing shareholders Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund, according to CNBC. TechCrunch’s Kate Park reported that Butterfly Effect announced the raise in a WeChat post and said it would keep hiring in China and abroad. HSG was formerly known as Sequoia China.
Manus didn’t disclose its valuation or how it plans to use the money, TechNode reported. Bloomberg reported last month that the round was set to double the company’s valuation to $4 billion, CNBC said, which would make Manus China’s most valuable AI agent maker.
The unwound Meta deal
Manus launched in China in early 2025 and moved its staff to Singapore after winning backing from the U.S. venture firm Benchmark, CNBC reported. Meta announced the acquisition in December, when Manus was said to be bringing in more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue, according to TechCrunch.
Chinese authorities ordered the deal unwound in April, amid concerns about losing AI talent to the West, TechCrunch reported. China’s National Development and Reform Commission said it had decided to “prohibit foreign investment in the Manus project,” according to CNBC. By then, Meta had already begun folding Manus’s team and technology into its own.
Manus resumed independent operations in August and said it had to delete some user data as part of the split, TechCrunch reported.
“You can separate companies, but you cannot make engineers forget what they learned,” Matthias Hendrichs, a Singapore-based adviser to global AI firms, told CNBC. Meta has since launched its own personal agent, Muse.
What investors and analysts are saying
“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,” Dan Wang, China director at Eurasia Group, told CNBC.
Analysts told CNBC that Manus could eventually aim for a public listing. TechCrunch reported the company is said to be considering a Hong Kong IPO.
The nearer task, according to analysts quoted by CNBC, is reworking its business and ownership structure. “The immediate task for Manus now is proving scale, profitability and regulatory alignment,” said Han Lin, China country director at The Asia Group.
Since the split, Manus has released Manus 2.0, which it says is built on a new in-house execution system called Cascade. It also launched Cue, a separate app that gives personal agents their own email addresses, phone numbers, digital wallets and computers, CNBC and TechCrunch reported. TechCrunch said the agents can make payments within limits the user sets.
Manus didn’t respond to TechCrunch’s questions about its valuation.
Source: CNBC, “Manus raises $500 million in first funding round since Meta breakup”
Additional sources: TechCrunch, Kate Park, “China's Manus raises over $500M in first funding round since split with Meta”; TechNode, “Manus parent Butterfly Effect completes more than $500 million funding round”
