China has stopped Meta from buying Manus, an agentic AI startup, for $2 billion and told both sides to cancel the deal, Reuters reports. The National Development and Reform Commission said the decision was in line with laws and regulations but did not provide further details.
The agentic AI market is expanding quickly worldwide, with Salesforce research predicting that by 2026, 80% of enterprise apps will have agent features. This helps explain why Meta offered so much for Manus and why China stepped in to keep the company local.
Red Xiao Hong and Yichao “Peak” Ji founded Manus in 2022. The company launched its general AI agent in March 2025, raised $75 million at a $500 million valuation the next month, and reached over $100 million in annual revenue by December, when Meta announced the deal.
Industry reports estimate the deal was worth between $2 billion and $3 billion, making it one of the biggest acquisitions of a Chinese AI startup.
Unlike ChatGPT or Grok, which answer user prompts, Manus runs in the cloud and can carry out complex tasks like analysing the S&P 500 or writing sales pitches on its own, without human help. On the GAIA benchmark, which tests real-world multi-step tasks, Manus beat OpenAI’s Deep Research agent by more than 10 percentage points in some areas.