Meta announces acquisition of AI agent unicorn Manus, unlocking productivity potential for FB, IG, and Thread

Meta announces the acquisition of Singapore AI startup Manus, marking the company’s third-largest deal in history, highlighting its ambition in the general Agent competition.
(Background recap: China’s popular AI agent “Manus” receives a $75 million investment led by Silicon Valley Benchmark, valuation surpassing $500 million)
(Additional context: Grok4 intelligence scores beat OpenAI o3 and Gemini 2.5 Pro! Is the multi-competition shifting to the political arena?)

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eta announced a few hours ago that it has acquired Singapore AI startup Manus, becoming the third-largest acquisition after WhatsApp and ScaleAI. Manus founder Xiao Hong will also join Meta as Vice President.

Manus has built one of the leading autonomous general agents capable of independently performing complex tasks such as market research, programming, and data analysis. We will continue to operate and sell Manus services and integrate them into our products.

Manus issued an official statement saying the company will continue operations:

Of course, ensuring that this change does not affect normal user experience is our top priority — Manus will continue to provide products and subscription services via app and website, while the company will continue to operate in Singapore.

Deal scale and key timelines

According to reports, the deal was finalized after just over ten days of negotiations. The estimated amount is in the “billions of dollars” range, and compared to Manus’s last funding valuation of $2 billion, this proves its valuation has rapidly increased in just a few months.

This is also Meta’s fifth AI acquisition this year, with total annual capital expenditure exceeding $70 billion.

Technical assets and Meta’s subsequent strategy

Manus positions itself as a “general AI Agent,” capable of automatically completing tasks such as resume screening, itinerary planning, programming, and stock analysis on cloud virtual machines without real-time human supervision. Since its official release in March 2025, its annual revenue has surpassed $100 million to $125 million, processing 147 trillion tokens, and creating 80 million virtual computers.

Originally based in China, Manus relocated to Singapore in July due to geopolitical scrutiny, removing regulatory obstacles for this acquisition.

Looking ahead, the market expects Meta to leverage this to strengthen productivity tools for Facebook, Instagram, and other products. We may see more tech giants acquiring new AI companies in the future, with capital, technology, and platform effects rapidly consolidating within a few ecosystems.