Eight months after Meta acquired it, Manus is independent again

Meta’s acquisition of Manus, reportedly valued at more than $2 billion, has been unwound after Beijing blocked the deal. The agent lab is returning to independence under its founding team.

Completed on December 29, 2025, Meta’s acquisition of Manus lasted a little more than eight months. The AI agent lab has announced that it has formally resumed independent operations under the leadership of its founding team.

This was not simply a transaction abandoned while negotiations were still underway. Meta had already acquired Manus, the previous investors had exited, and some employees had moved into the group’s Singapore offices. The completed deal then had to be reversed at the request of Chinese authorities.

Neither company disclosed the purchase price. Reuters and several other publications estimated it at more than $2 billion, making Manus one of Meta’s largest acquisitions intended to strengthen its AI strategy.

When the deal was announced, Manus was expected to retain its subscription service, application, and Singapore operations. Its technology would gradually be integrated into Meta’s products and eventually reach billions of users across the group’s platforms.

Manus does not develop its own foundation model. Its product operates as an execution layer that can select tools, coordinate multiple steps, and carry a task through to completion. It can conduct research, analyze data, build an application, or automate a workflow using models supplied by other companies.

That position attracted Meta, which was looking to complement its model research with an established general-purpose agent. Manus said at the time that its service had processed more than 147 trillion tokens and created over 80 million virtual computing environments since launch.

The company’s origins, however, turned the acquisition into a geopolitical issue. Manus was created in China by Butterfly Effect before moving its headquarters and operations to Singapore. Following a $75 million funding round led by U.S. venture capital firm Benchmark in May 2025, the company closed its Chinese offices and laid off dozens of employees.

The relocation was intended to support its international development and reduce its exposure to restrictions affecting technology investment between China and the United States. It was not enough to place the transaction beyond Beijing’s reach.

China’s Ministry of Commerce opened an investigation in January 2026, only days after the acquisition was completed. Authorities sought to determine whether the company’s relocation, transfer of assets, and purchase by a U.S. group complied with rules governing foreign investment, technology exports, and cross-border data transfers.

In March, CEO Xiao Hong and chief scientist Ji Yichao were summoned to Beijing before being barred from leaving the country, according to several sources interviewed by Reuters. Meanwhile, the Singapore-based teams had already begun working from Meta’s offices.

On April 27, China’s National Development and Reform Commission prohibited foreign investment in Manus and ordered the parties to withdraw from the acquisition. The decision relied on the country’s national security review mechanism for foreign investments. It did not name Meta directly but targeted the transaction completed four months earlier.

For Chinese authorities, incorporation in Singapore was not enough to erase Manus’s historical connections to the country. The origins of its technology, the nationality of its founders, the previous location of its research, its former investors, and potential transfers of data or expertise could still justify intervention.

Meta responded that the transaction had fully complied with applicable laws and said it expected an appropriate resolution. The Chinese order nevertheless required the companies to reverse a deal that had already closed.

Unwinding an acquisition of this kind involves more than returning shares in exchange for a refund. The companies also need to separate employees, internal systems, contracts, source code, data, and knowledge shared since the agreement was completed.

An operational separation began over the following months. Meta and Manus stopped sharing data, while access to internal tools and joint projects was gradually withdrawn. No public assessment explains what Meta had already integrated, what was deleted, or how many employees changed companies during the period.

Several former Chinese investors, including HSG, ZhenFund, and Tencent, reportedly considered buying Manus back from Meta for approximately $2 billion. Reuters said in June that it had been unable to verify those discussions independently. Benchmark was not expected to participate, according to the information available at the time.

The announcement confirming Manus’s return to independence does not disclose the company’s new ownership structure, current shareholders, or the financial terms of its separation from Meta. The founding team’s continued leadership therefore describes operational control without revealing who currently owns the company.

The separation also created an unusual consequence for some users. Manus asked them to back up data generated on or after December 29, 2025, the exact date of Meta’s acquisition. That information was then deleted between August 23 and August 24, 2026, to meet regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions.

Affected accounts lost access to the service for approximately two days. Users have been able to restore their data through a dedicated portal since August 25. Manus has not set a deadline for restoration. Those who were not affected do not need to take any action.

The company has not publicly identified the countries, criteria, or account categories covered by the measure. It only states that certain users in regions subject to specific regulatory requirements were affected.

The deletion was not caused by a breach or intrusion. In its notice to users, Manus explicitly attributes the measure to its separation from Meta and the requirements attached to its return to independence. The company says its data is now stored in the United States and Singapore.

The backup-and-restoration process presumably