With exactly two days to go before the turn of the calendar to 2026, Meta found time to move its acquisition pipeline forward. And within an agenda that has been the guiding thread of much of its technology investments throughout the year: artificial intelligence (AI).
The company behind Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, led by Mark Zuckerberg, announced the acquisition of Manus, an artificial intelligence startup. The value of the transaction was not disclosed, but according to The Wall Street Journal , the deal values the startup at over US$2 billion.
The rationale behind the M&A is obvious. But, far beyond reinforcing Meta's total focus on AI, the deal is noteworthy for being one of the rare transactions in this space involving an American big tech company and a Chinese company. Or rather, one originating from the country of the Great Wall.
Manus was born within Butterfly Effect, a Chinese company founded in 2022, and has already been considered the next DeepSeek , the Chinese company that, earlier this year, shook the foundations – and the stocks – of American big tech companies by announcing its AI model.
With a large part of its team based in China, Manus began to take shape in 2023. But, contrary to its local roots, it is headquartered in Singapore, where it moved a few months after its official launch in March of this year.
This change came against the backdrop of a $75 million funding round raised in April with Benchmark, an American venture capital firm. The investment valued the startup at $500 million and was criticized in the US, on the grounds that it violated the ban on American groups investing in Chinese AI.
With the move to Singapore, Manus also came under scrutiny from the Chinese media, which began to refer to the company as a "defector." Up to that point, the company had raised US$10 million from local and regional investors, such as Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG.
Amid this backlash, the startup does not offer its portfolio in China. This hasn't stopped the company from attracting attention with its artificial intelligence agents that promise to perform autonomous tasks with fewer instructions than models from rivals like OpenAI's ChatGPT and DeepSeek itself.
About two weeks ago, the company translated the evolution of this offering into numbers, announcing that it had surpassed the mark of US$100 million in annual recurring revenue, just eight months after its official launch.
According to Bloomberg , the start of negotiations with Meta coincided precisely with the release of this data. The agreement with the American giant was reportedly finalized in approximately ten days.
In today's announcement, Meta highlighted that Manus has developed one of the leading general-purpose autonomous agents capable of performing complex tasks such as market research, programming, and data analysis, already meeting the daily needs of "millions of users and businesses worldwide."
“We plan to expand this service to many more companies,” Meta said in a statement, adding that it will continue to operate and market the startup's portfolio, as well as integrate it into its own products.
Manus, in a statement, highlighted that the acquisition validates its "pioneering work" with general-purpose artificial intelligence agents. It also stated that it will continue selling and operating its services through its app and website, while maintaining its headquarters in Singapore.
“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger and more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus operates or how decisions are made,” said Xiao Hong, co-founder and CEO of Manus, in a statement released by the company.
On the other hand, reinforcing the message of the absence of any ties with China, a Meta spokesperson told Bloomberg that, in the agreement, the company bought all the shares of Chinese investors in Manus, which will no longer have partners from that country in its shareholder base.
Controversies aside, the acquisition is another piece in the puzzle of Meta's AI investments. And, according to the British newspaper Financial Times , which quotes Liu Yuan, partner at ZhenFund, one of Manus's first investors, the amounts involved reflect Mark Zuckerberg's appetite.
According to Yuan, this would be Meta's third largest acquisition in history, behind only the purchase of WhatsApp in 2014 for US$19 billion, and the acquisition of a 49% stake in Scale AI, a Californian startup also focused on artificial intelligence, in June of this year.
Meta's efforts in this arena are not limited to M&As. In January, Zuckerberg, who has touted the idea of developing a "personal superintelligence," announced a plan to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence over a four-year period.
As part of this strategy, which includes, among other things, heavy investment in data centers and the development of its AI models, Zuckerberg himself has been involved – and has not skimped – in recruiting artificial intelligence professionals from rivals in Silicon Valley.
In the specific case of Manus, the acquisition would give Meta more breathing room in the field of artificial intelligence assistants, a competition in which the company faces heavyweight rivals such as OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft.
While providing a new weapon to advance in this battle, the value involved in the acquisition may give more ammunition to Meta's critics and investors, who have questioned the company's billion-dollar outlays in this space, with few results so far.
On Nasdaq, after closing Monday's trading session with a slight drop of 0.69%, Meta's shares are up 0.13% in pre-market trading. Year-to-date, the shares have appreciated by 12.4%, giving the company a market capitalization of US$1.66 trillion.
