Meta buys startup known for its AI task automation agents

Meta has acquired an AI startup called Manus — known for its custom research and website-building agents — in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, according toThe Wall Street Journal. It's reportedly one of the largest acquisitions yet involving a startup nurtured in China's AI ecosystem.

Manus arrived in March 2025, shortly after another Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek appeared on the scene. The company (called Butterfly Effect at the time) originally described it as "the first general AI agent" to perform complex tasks autonomously, rather than just generating ideas. It draws from several third-party models, particularly Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet and versions of Alibaba's Qwen.

Manus is designed to automate certain tasks, like market research, coding, sales data analysis and website cloning and creation. (However, one skeptic called it "a product devilishly optimized for influencers, which is why it exploded ...