Meta buys Manus for $2 billion to power high-stakes AI agent race
SOURCE:TechRadar|BY: Eric Hal Schwartz
Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus signals a major shift toward AI agents that can autonomously handle real work, not just generate responses.
(Image credit: Manus)
Meta has acquired AI startup Manus in a deal reportedly worth over $2 billion
Manus builds autonomous AI agents that perform complex tasks like coding and data analysis
The acquisition accelerates Meta’s pivot from chatbot tools to task-completing AI across its platforms
Meta has acquired AI startup Manus, known for its semi-autonomous AI agents, in a deal reportedly valued at more than $2 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. It's one of the largest AI acquisitions to date. More importantly, it underscores Meta’s plan to shift from creating foundational models like Llama to providing full-service AI agents capable of completing complex tasks for individuals and businesses.
Meta said it plans to make the AI agent platform part of its Meta AI assistant and enterprise offerings. Manus agents can perform complex analytics and long-term research and planning, along with the more usual conversations and image generation. It can also go out to the web and carry out tasks for users, which is why it's named Manus, Latin for hand.
"We will continue to operate and sell the Manus service, as well as integrate it into our products," Meta said in a statement. "Manus is already serving the daily needs of millions of users and businesses worldwide. It launched its first General AI Agent earlier this year and has already served more than 147T tokens and created more than 80M virtual computers. We plan to scale this service to many more businesses."
The reported valuation aligns with where Manus had been headed before Meta intervened. The company had been raising new funds at a $2 billion valuation when Meta approached with an offer. With over $125 million in revenue run rate just eight months after launch, Manus had proven not only its technical capabilities but also its commercial appeal.
But this isn’t just a story of a high-value tech buyout. It marks a directional turn for Meta, one that deepens its commitment to building AI that does more than chat. In fact, Manus was not simply another chatbot; it was one of the first widely available agentic systems able to autonomously perform multi-step, goal-oriented tasks using a blend of reasoning, memory, and tool use. Users could, for instance, hand Manus a research objective or a programming task and watch it coordinate a solution end-to-end. That’s a radically different product category than LLMs trained solely to predict the next word.
Meta wants to build AI that acts. That's also the reason Meta invested $14.3 billion in Scale AI earlier this year. But a working autonomous AI platform is several steps beyond. The company’s pricing model, a mix of free and premium subscriptions, helped it grow rapidly, especially among developers, analysts, and SMEs looking to automate workflows without hiring engineers.
And while Meta has been pouring money into building out its own LLMs, developing effective agentic behavior remains a highly specific engineering and design challenge. Tools like planning, memory, tool-use, and recursive reasoning can’t simply be bolted onto a large model, and Manus has already solved many of these problems.
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“Joining Meta allows us to build on a stronger, more sustainable foundation without changing how Manus works or how decisions are made,” Manus CEO Xiao Hong said in a statement. “We’re excited about what the future holds with Meta and Manus working together, and we will continue to iterate the product and serve users that have defined Manus from the beginning.”
Meta is racing to build up AI agents among fierce competition. Google’s Gemini is actively developing agentic features, while OpenAI’s ChatGPT has introduced tools to perform tasks online and provide more assistance that adapts to context. But Manus promises to make it easy to integrate its services into other platforms. That earned it interest from companies like Microsoft, which tested Manus integration in Windows 11.
With Meta owning the whole thing, what happens next is just as much a question of strategy as it is technology.
Manus’s origins add a layer of complexity. Initially developed under the Chinese AI startup Butterfly Effect before spinning off, concerns over data security likely contributed to its relocation from Beijing to Singapore this year and the layoffs of most of its Chinese workforce. Meta's acquisition even comes with an explicit condition that “there will be no continuing Chinese ownership interests,” according to the companies.
Meta has had to walk a fine line in the global AI race as it skirts regulatory scrutiny. Manus lets it jump ahead in product development, but will probably come with at least some probing questions about who owns the data used to run Manus. In 2026, no major American tech company can afford to look like it has Chinese influence, just ask TikTok.
Then there’s the hardware angle. Meta’s Reality Labs division doesn't bring in much cash, but Meta still sees a future of smart glasses and agentic AI assistants that interact with the physical world. Manus could provide the cognitive layer for those ambitions.
The acquisition makes it clear that Meta sees 2026 as the time when AI chatbots will become AI agents. With Manus powering its AI platforms, Meta plans to be the tool of first resort when it comes to AI engaging with the real world.
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Eric Hal Schwartz is a freelance writer for TechRadar with more than 15 years of experience covering the intersection of the world and technology. For the last five years, he served as head writer for Voicebot.ai and was on the leading edge of reporting on generative AI and large language models. He's since become an expert on the products of generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude, Google Gemini, and every other synthetic media tool. His experience runs the gamut of media, including print, digital, broadcast, and live events. Now, he's continuing to tell the stories people want and need to hear about the rapidly evolving AI space and its impact on their lives. Eric is based in New York City.
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