Meta to buy Chinese AI startup Manus

(Sharecast News) - Meta Platforms has agreed to buy Chinese AI startup Manus for an undisclosed sum. The company said in a statement that 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 will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into its products.

Manus launched its first General AI Agent earlier this year and has already served more than 147 trillion tokens and created more than 80M virtual computers. "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.

"We're excited to welcome the Manus team and help improve the lives of billions of people and millions of businesses with their technology."

Although Meta did not provide any financial details of the transaction, the Wall Steet Journal said it was valued at about $2bn. Reuters suggested a valuation of between $2bn and $3bn.