Six months after Beijing killed Meta's $2 billion purchase, the AI agent startup has new cash from Chinese backers, a new product and a phone deal with OPPO.
Manus, the AI agent startup Meta tried to buy for about $2 billion, has raised more than $500 million on its own. It's the company's first funding round since Chinese regulators ordered the Meta deal cancelled in April.
It matters because AI agents, tools that carry out whole tasks for you, are the next fight in AI, and China has shown it will stop its top AI firms being sold to US giants. Manus has since launched Manus 2.0 and will power Agent Mode on OPPO's Find X10 phones. A Hong Kong listing is reportedly under consideration.
Meta agreed to pay about $2 billion for Manus. Ten months later, the AI agent startup may be worth twice that without Meta. On October 8, Manus’s parent company, Butterfly Effect, said it had raised more than $500 million, its first funding round since Chinese regulators forced Meta to undo the purchase.
Why should you care about a startup most people haven’t used? Because Manus makes AI agents, software that doesn’t just answer questions but goes off and does multistep jobs for you, like researching a topic, building a website or planning a trip. That is the next big battle in AI, and this deal shows that China is willing to block US tech giants from buying its most promising AI companies.
Two Chinese investment firms, Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, led the round. Existing shareholders also put in more money, including Tencent, one of China’s largest tech companies, HSG (the firm formerly known as Sequoia China) and ZhenFund.
Manus announced the raise in a post on WeChat and did not give a valuation or say how it will spend the money. It did say it will keep hiring both in China and abroad. A Bloomberg report in September said a $500 million round was nearly done and would value Manus at around $4 billion, roughly double Meta’s price. Manus has not confirmed that number.
Manus first went viral in March 2025, when videos showed its agent carrying out complicated tasks on people’s computers. It raised $75 million from the US venture firm Benchmark that April, then moved its headquarters and key staff from China to Singapore in mid-2025. In December 2025, Meta agreed to buy it. At the time, Manus was reported to be bringing in more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue.
Beijing didn’t accept the move. On April 27, a security review office run by China’s state planner, the National Development and Reform Commission, banned the acquisition and ordered the companies to cancel it. The concern, widely reported, was China losing AI talent and technology to the West. Moving to Singapore wasn’t enough to put Manus beyond Beijing’s reach.
Meta then started pulling away. In June it cut Manus off from its internal data systems, and the startup’s first backers set about reacquiring it for the same $2 billion. By August, Manus said it would soon operate on its own again. As part of the split, it deleted data some users had created on or after December 29, 2025, the day Meta bought it.
Manus didn’t sit still. In late September it released Manus 2.0, built on a new framework, a layer of software that shapes how the underlying AI models behave. The company says it cuts the agent’s token use (the units AI models are billed by) by 23.2% on some tasks and speeds processing by more than 28%.
The update also added a tool for making video clips and simple games, and a feature called Cloud Computer that can host websites and keep long jobs running when your own computer is off. A separate app, Cue, gives personal AI agents their own email address, phone number, digital wallet and computer, so they can message people and make payments within limits you set.
Then, on October 13, OPPO announced it will build Manus’s agent technology into Agent Mode, part of its AI Mind Pilot assistant, on the upcoming Find X10 phones running ColorOS 17. OPPO’s example: ask it to organize a trip, and it pulls flight, hotel and restaurant bookings from different apps into a day-by-day plan.
If you use AI tools at work or at home, the Manus story is a preview of where things are heading. Agents that book, buy and send emails for you are moving from demos into phones and everyday apps. Manus competes with tools like Cursor, Lovable and Replit, and its old suitor has moved on: Meta built its own assistant app, Muse, which recently passed ChatGPT on the US App Store.
There’s a trust question too. Giving an agent access to your email, files and payment details is a big step with any company. Security analysts have pointed out that both Manus and OPPO fall under Chinese law, which can require organizations to cooperate with state intelligence work. OPPO says ColorOS 17 asks for your consent before sending content to Manus’s cloud. Read those permission prompts carefully before you say yes.
Manus is reported to be considering a stock market listing in Hong Kong, which would be a natural next step for a company with Chinese investors. The fresh $500 million gives it room to hire and compete with much bigger rivals. The first big test of its consumer reach is the OPPO Find X10 launch, when ordinary phone buyers get to try a Manus agent for themselves.
No. China ordered the deal cancelled in April, Meta cut ties in June, and Manus has operated as an independent company since August.
Manus hasn’t said. A September Bloomberg report put the expected valuation at about $4 billion, roughly double Meta’s offer.
Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led it, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund also taking part.
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