Meta abandons Manus AI after spending two billion dollars

The AI agent fever is turning into the flu at Meta. Since the start of the year, the entire tech industry has sworn by nothing but these “digital colleagues” capable of sorting your emails, coding new functions in your application and filling out your spreadsheets while you sleep. Meta had chosen the fast track to enter the race: a check for more than $2 billion, signed in December, to acquire Manus.Six months later, an internal memo tells teams to migrate their projects and launch nothing else on the platform, access to the group’s systems having been cut off since early June. The document uses an unambiguous word: Meta is “sunsetting” Manus—in other words, shutting it down in an orderly manner (the industry’s polite way of saying a burial).

How did Manus go from global sensation to hot potato?

The saga begins in March 2025, when a demo of an autonomous AI agent racks up more than one million views in twenty hours. Manus browses the web, codes, manages files, and chains tasks together without supervision, and the tech world sees it as China’s second “DeepSeek moment.” The startup raises $75 million from US fund Benchmark in May, closes its Chinese offices in July, and moves to Singapore without asking Beijing for permission (an administrative oversight that will eventually cost two billion).

When Meta pulls out its checkbook in December, the agent market is indeed boiling over: Claude Cowork launches on January 12, the open-source OpenClaw racks up 60,000 GitHub stars in 72 hours, and Mark Zuckerberg has no intention of watching the train go by. Manus is integrated at breakneck speed, with executives transferred, teams hooked up to internal systems, and group employees converted to in-house tools. The Chinese authorities, who have missed none of this rush, open an investigation as early as January. In March, the two cofounders are summoned to Beijing and forbidden from leaving the country.On April 27, the ax fell in a one-sentence statement: the transaction must be cancelled, without justification or any avenue of appeal. Beijing had never publicly blocked a foreign acquisition in AI since its investment screening rules came into effect in 2021.

Why does this case bear such a striking resemblance to the TikTok affair?

Washington spent years urging ByteDance to divest TikTok or face a ban, on national security grounds, and Beijing has now turned the argument back on the messenger. There is no question of allowing the talent and technology of a China-founded startup to end up in the hands of an American giant, even after a move to Singapore. The message to Chinese founders tempted by exile is clear enough (China has also tightened its outbound investment rules in the meantime, locking down the next potential candidates for departure).

Now comes the bill, and it is steep for everyone. The three founders are seeking to raise $1 billion to buy back their company at the valuation paid by Meta, ahead of a possible Hong Kong listing. The unwinding will be acrobatic, since earlier investors have already cashed their checks and certain bridges between Manus and the Meta ecosystem, including Instagram and the advertising manager, remain active despite the firewall. The service even continues to add features as its owner digs his own grave—a liquidation with commercial animations, in a manner of speaking.If an AI agent sorts your emails under the Manus brand, savor the moment: few pieces of software can boast of having survived two superpowers, and soon two owners.

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Source: Bloomberg