Meta says it is acquiring Manus, an ‘AI agent’ company with Chinese roots

Tech behemoth Meta said Tuesday it is acquiring Manus, a company that was founded in China and makes artificial intelligence agents.

The acquisition caps a major year for AI development, including high stock valuations, consolidation and big-money partnerships among major AI players.

Manus was started in China before it moved to Singapore.

“Manus has built one of the leading autonomous general-purpose agents that can independently execute complex tasks like market research, coding, and data analysis,” Meta said in a statement. “We will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products.”

Meta is the parent company of Facebook, the popular social media app. It is among the major companies leaning heavily into AI, which could revolutionize how people work, learn and live.

Earlier this year, Meta invested more than $14 billion into a start-up called Scale AI and brought its founder into Meta’s leadership team. It also acquired another startup, Limitless, which makes AI wearables that can record meetings, generate summaries and perform other tasks.

Meta said Manus serves millions of users and businesses with its AI agent, which can make decisions and perform tasks autonomously.

“We plan to scale this service to many more businesses,” Meta said. “Manus’s exceptional talent will join Meta’s team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including in Meta AI.”

The statement did not disclose the terms of the deal, though sources told Reuters it was valued between $2 billion and $3 billion.

AI was big business in 2025. Some people say it’s too big.

High valuations and allegations of circular financing, in which companies create artificial demand or revenue by investing in each other, have fueled comparisons to the dot-com boom and bust in the late 1990s.

However, others say major financing and deals are a natural part of building a revolutionary technology.

The situation has put a spotlight on chipmakers such as Nvidia, a highly valuable company that had to negotiate with the White House over its ability to sell chips to China, the top geopolitical rival to the U.S. in building AI.

President Trump has courted major tech CEOs through White House roundtables and other events and recently signed an order banning states from creating their own AI regulations.