AI Startup Manus Raises $500 Million After China Nixed Meta’s $2 Billion Acquisition

What it claims

Manus's parent, Butterfly Effect, confirmed in a WeChat post that it raised more than $500 million. Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the round. It was the company's first raise since China forced Meta's roughly $2 billion acquisition to be unwound. The company disclosed no valuation. Bloomberg had earlier reported a target of $500 million at a $4 billion valuation, about double Meta's price, but the company has not confirmed that figure. The only stated use of the money is continued hiring in China and abroad.

The parts that matter for anyone using or building on Manus:

• User data was deleted at the separation. When Manus resumed independent operation in August, it deleted some user data created on or after December 29, 2025, to separate its systems from Meta's. Users and integrators from that window should check what they lost.
• The current product is Cue, not the original agent. Cue gives agents their own phone numbers and digital wallets. Agent payments are capped at a budget the user sets.
• Ownership is now closed to foreign investors. On April 27, the National Development and Reform Commission said it would "prohibit foreign investment in Manus in accordance with laws and regulations."
• Model dependencies. At launch, Manus acknowledged using Anthropic's Claude and fine-tuned Alibaba Qwen models alongside its own. The page does not say whether Cue uses the same stack.

How the deal unwound

1. Mid-2025: Manus moved its team to Singapore, shut most of its China operations and laid off dozens of employees in July.
2. December 2025: Manus reached $100M ARR, and Meta announced the acquisition.
3. January: China's commerce ministry said it would assess the deal.
4. March: According to Reuters, co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were summoned to Beijing and barred from leaving the country.
5. April 27: The NDRC ordered the deal withdrawn.
6. June: Meta cut ties.
7. August: Manus announced independent operation and deleted the post-December-29 data.

Moving the team to Singapore did not keep Manus out of Beijing's reach. The co-founders were held in China and the deal was still reversed.

Limits

• This is a news report, not a technical source. It gives no API, pricing, availability or architecture for Cue.
• The page does not specify which user data was deleted ("some" data created on or after December 29, 2025).
• The $4 billion valuation is secondhand from Bloomberg and predates the round.
• Context for competing options, also from the page:
• OpenClaw is an open-source agent that runs locally and takes commands through WhatsApp and Telegram. It passed 100,000 GitHub stars within weeks, and OpenAI then hired its creator, Peter Steinberger.
• Muse Code is Meta's own coding agent, launched in August.
• For teams depending on Chinese AI vendors, the article notes a related May rule: senior AI staff at some private firms, including Alibaba and DeepSeek, now need approval to travel abroad.