Manus raises $500M in first round since Beijing killed Meta's $2B takeover
Butterfly Effect, the parent company of AI agent startup Manus, announced Thursday it has raised more than $500 million — its first round since Beijing ordered Meta's $2 billion acquisition unwound — co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund.
Manus is back on the capital markets. Butterfly Effect, the parent company of the AI agent startup, said on Thursday it has raised more than $500 million — its first funding round since Beijing ordered Meta's $2 billion-plus acquisition of the company unwound in April.
The round was co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, according to Reuters, with existing investors Tencent, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and ZhenFund also participating. Manus said it will continue hiring both at home and abroad. Reuters calls it the first round since Manus' founders and investors bought the company back from Meta.
The Meta saga: from $2B deal to forced breakup
Manus went viral last year after a demo of its general-purpose AI agent, which carries out multi-step tasks — research, document preparation, app building — with minimal human input. It relocated staff to Singapore in mid-2025, then announced the $2 billion Meta acquisition that December, at which point it was said to be pulling in annual recurring revenue of more than $100 million. We covered the deal's collapse last month: in April, China's economic planning body ordered the acquisition unwound amid intensifying worries in Beijing about losing AI talent and researchers to the West. Manus resumed independent operations in August and said it was required to delete some user data as part of the separation.
What the money is for: Manus 2.0 and Cue
The round lands as Manus ships. The company recently launched Manus 2.0, a new architecture built around a reworked agent harness, alongside Cue, a standalone personal agent app that gives each agent its own email address, phone number, digital wallet and computer — agents can communicate across services, handle tasks and make payments within limits set by the user. Manus also offers a chatbot and vibe-coding tools for building apps and websites, creating designs and presentations, and generating video.
A $4 billion valuation in the making?
Manus did not disclose its valuation, but last month it was reported to be in talks to raise $500 million at a $4 billion valuation — double the price of the collapsed Meta deal. The Information reported in June that Manus' annualized revenue run rate had surged to about $500 million, and the company is reportedly considering a Hong Kong listing, though it won't begin the IPO process until at least 2027, according to a source cited by Reuters.
The message from the investor side is clear: even as OpenAI, Meta and Google fold agents into their own platforms, there is still half a billion dollars of conviction that an independent agent lab can stand on its own — this time with its ownership firmly on the other side of the Pacific.