Manus

Manus is the brand and product of Butterfly Effect (legal entity: Butterfly Effect Pte. Ltd.), founded in 2022 by Xiao Hong; co-founders include Ji Yichao ("Peak") as chief scientist and Zhang Tao. The team first became known for the Monica browser assistant and, on 6 March 2025, launched "Manus" — a general, autonomous AI agent that independently plans and executes complex, multi-step tasks (research, code, slides, images and video generation) by orchestrating external language models and tools. Originating in China (teams in Wuhan and Beijing), the company relocated its headquarters to Singapore in mid-2025. Its business model relies on paid subscription plans (roughly US$39–199 per month in 2025) and a developer API. In April 2025 Manus raised about US$75M in a Series B led by Benchmark at an approximately US$500M valuation; earlier backers included ZhenFund, HSG (formerly Sequoia China) and Tencent. In December 2025 Meta announced its intent to acquire the company (reports cited a US$2–3B valuation), but the deal was blocked by Chinese authorities in 2026, after which Manus resumed independent operations and — per September 2026 reports — pursued a new round targeting a ~US$4B valuation.