Manus

Artificial Intelligence · AI Agents

Funding

Manus parent Butterfly Effect raises over $500M after Meta deal unwound

Chinese regulators forced Meta to abandon its $2B purchase, and investors just bet big on the AI agent startup anyway.

• Butterfly Effect, parent of AI agent startup Manus, raised more than $500 million in a round co-led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital — its first financing since Meta's acquisition of the company was unwound.
• Manus builds general-purpose AI agents and vibe-coding tools that autonomously handle research, app building, design and automation tasks with minimal human input.
• Chinese regulators ordered Meta in April to reverse its roughly $2 billion acquisition of Manus, and existing backers Tencent, HSG and ZhenFund bought back the shares before this new round.
• Manus's annualized revenue run rate reportedly surged to roughly $400M-$500M, up from about $100M when Meta first struck the acquisition deal in December.
• Manus now competes with Meta's own newly launched personal-agent app Muse and OpenAI's Dots, both arriving after the Meta-Manus split collapsed.
• Manus is reportedly weighing a Hong Kong IPO and restructuring into a China-incorporated joint venture, though a listing process isn't expected to begin before 2027.
• The round shows investors see Beijing's reversal of a major US tech acquisition as a one-off regulatory event rather than a lasting blow to China's AI agent sector.