Meta isn’t just poaching top AI researchers from other labs — it’s acquiring entire AI companies too.
Meta has acquired AI agents company Manus AI. Manus will continue to sell and operate its Manus product through its app and website, and the company will continue to be based out of Singapore. Meta will integrate Manus’ services across its products, and “unlock business opportunities”. Manus’s team will join Meta and build agents for its consumer and business products.
“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” said Manus CEO Xiao Hong. “We’re excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus working together and we will continue to iterate the product and serve users that have defined Manus from the beginning,” he added.
Manus was launched in March 2025 by Xiao Hong as CEO, Yichao “Peak” Ji as Chief Scientist and Zhang Tao as Product Partner. Hong was a graduate of Huazhong University of Science and Technology and a serial entrepreneur who started Nightingale Technology in 2015 which created productivity tools like Yiban Assistant, serving over 2 million users and attracting investments from Tencent and ZhenFund. In 2022, he launched Butterfly Effect and Monica, an AI browser extension that gained 10 million users.
Manus is an autonomous AI agent that can execute complex tasks independently, and help with research, data analysis, content creation and so on. It uses features like asynchronous cloud operation, code-based actions, and multi-modal processing of text, images, and data to complete entire tasks independently. Manus says it has so far processed more than 147 trillion tokens and powered the creation of over 80 million “virtual computers”. Just two weeks ago, Manus said that it had crossed an ARR of $100 million in 8 months after its launch, and was growing 20% month-on-month. The company has around 100 employees.
Meta now seems to have swooped in and acquired Manus for an undisclosed sum. It’s an interesting acquisition, because Meta is primarily a consumer-facing company, while Manus largely has business use cases. Meta could however use Manus to power some its its business operations, such as those which would allow businesses on the platform to create ads and ad campaigns and help automate other tasks. Meta will also get access to a top team which seems to have created a successful AI product, something which Meta has failed to do so far. It remains to be seen how this acquisition plays out, but Meta still seems to be aggressively moving in the AI space to compete with other top tech giants which seem to have a significant lead for now.