Meta acquires clever agent agency Manus, capping 12 months of aggressive AI strikes

Meta Platforms mentioned Tuesday that it has acquired Manus, a Singapore-based developer of general-purpose AI brokers, because the tech big continues its huge investments into synthetic intelligence. 

Manus, based in China earlier than relocating to Singapore, launched its first normal AI agent earlier this 12 months, which may execute complicated duties equivalent to market analysis, coding, and information evaluation.

The corporate claimed it had achieved an annualized common income of greater than $100 million simply eight months after launch, whereas its income run price exceeded $125 million.

Meta mentioned in a assertion that its acquisition was geared toward accelerating AI innovation for companies and integrating superior automation into its client and enterprise merchandise, together with its Meta AI assistant.

“Manus is already serving the day by day wants of hundreds of thousands of customers and companies worldwide … We plan to scale this service to many extra companies,” Meta mentioned.

In line with the companies, Manus will proceed working its subscription service with out disruption.

Whereas additional phrases of the acquisition weren’t disclosed, the Wall Road Journal reported that the deal closed at an quantity over $2 billion, in keeping with sources aware of the acquisition.

The beginning-up was searching for a recent spherical of fundraising at a $2 billion valuation when it was approached by Meta, the report added.

Manus started as a product of Chinese language start-up Butterfly Impact, also referred to as Monica.Im, earlier than rising right into a separate entity.

It emerged as a notable AI participant earlier this 12 months after claiming its chatbot supplied superior efficiency to OpenAI’s Deep Analysis agent.

The corporate raised $75 million in a Collection B funding spherical led by U.S. enterprise agency Benchmark in April, and is backed by Tencent and non-public fairness agency HongShan Capital Group (HSG), previously generally known as Sequoia, in keeping with information from market analysis agency Tracxn.

The beginning-up reportedly laid off most of its employees in Beijing in July earlier than transferring its headquarters to Singapore in June because it appeared in the direction of international enlargement.

“Becoming a member of Meta permits us to construct on a stronger, extra sustainable basis with out altering how Manus works or how selections are made,” Xiao Hong, CEO of Manus, mentioned in a firm launch. 

The agency additionally introduced a strategic partnership with Alibaba’s Qwen AI staff in March, highlighting its current ties to Chinese language tech corporations.

Meta’s acquisition of Manus matches into its broader AI technique of scooping up specialised AI start-ups to amass expertise and fast-track its broader AI enterprise, together with the event of its open-source Llama massive language fashions.

In June, for instance, Meta invested $14.3 billion in AI start-up Scale AI, in a deal that introduced its founder and CEO, Alexandr Wang, onto Meta’s AI management staff.

In the meantime, Meta acquired AI-wearables start-up Limitless earlier this month as the corporate seems to be to develop its AI system enterprise.

Within the case of Manus, the agency’s AI agent instruments have drawn curiosity from main tech corporations. In October, Microsoft started testing Manus in Home windows 11 PCs, permitting customers to create web sites from native information. 

To this point, Manus claimed to have processed greater than 147 trillion “tokens” of textual content and information, and supported over 80 million digital computer systems. It gives each free and paid subscription tiers.

Meta mentioned Manus workers will be part of its groups as the corporate continues to aggressively poach AI expertise from start-ups and main rivals, together with OpenAI and Google.