Officially announced: Zuckerberg bought Manus for billions of dollars, and the 1993-born founder became a vice president at Meta.

Manus has been acquired by Meta!

According to a report from Zhidx on December 30th, today, based on the official announcements from Manus and Meta, Meta has acquired Butterfly Effect, the parent company of the popular general Agent product Manus. The Manus service will continue to operate and be sold, and will be integrated into Meta's consumer and enterprise product ecosystem.

Manus officially announced the acquisition on the X platform

Alexandr Wang (Wang Tao), the head of Meta's Super Intelligence Laboratory (MSL), also reposted the relevant news and captioned it, saying that the Manus team is at the world - class level in exploring the problem of over - capacity of today's models. In addition, MSL is currently recruiting in Singapore, and 100 members of the Manus team have joined MSL's local organization.

Wang Tao reposted the relevant news on the X platform

According to a report from LatePost, the scale of this deal reached billions of dollars. Before the acquisition, Manus was seeking a new round of financing at a valuation of $2 billion. ZhenFund, a long - term investor in Butterfly Effect, said that this deal is Meta's third - largest acquisition since its establishment, costing only less than the acquisitions of WhatsApp and Scale AI. After the acquisition is completed, Xiao Hong, the founder and CEO of Butterfly Effect, will join Meta and serve as a vice - president of Meta.

Manus said that this acquisition is recognition of its "pioneering work" in general AI Agents. Since its launch, Manus' Agents have processed more than 147 trillion tokens and created more than 8000 virtual machines.

Manus' official announcement of the acquisition

Meta said in the announcement that the purpose of this acquisition is to bring leading general autonomous Agent capabilities to billions of users, and it plans to promote this service to more enterprises.

Meta's official announcement of the acquisition

In March of this year, Manus emerged as the "world's first general AI Agent", and the Agents it created can autonomously browse websites through cloud virtual machines and perform complex tasks such as booking tickets, analyzing stocks, and in - depth research. At its launch, it attracted widespread attention, and invitation codes were extremely hard to get.

Since its launch, Manus has completed multiple iterations and has successively released versions Manus 1.5 and Manus 1.6. Manus 1.6 upgraded the core Agent architecture and can complete more complex tasks with less supervision.

In December of this year, Manus revealed that it had achieved an increase in ARR from $0 to $100 million in 8 months.

In addition, Manus also moved its headquarters from China to Singapore in June of this year. In July, there were reports of layoffs at Manus' Beijing company and the relocation of core technical personnel to Singapore.

According to a report from LatePost, Butterfly Effect, the parent company of Manus, has completed 4 rounds of financing. After the seed - round financing in February 2023, its post - investment valuation was $14 million. After the angel - round financing in August 2023, the post - investment valuation reached $50 million. Both of these two rounds of financing were invested by ZhenFund.

In November 2024, Butterfly Effect completed its Series A financing with a post - investment valuation of $85 million. The investors included Sequoia China, Tencent, ZhenFund, Wang Huiwen, Old Friendship Capital, etc.

In April 2025, Butterfly Effect completed its Series B financing with a post - investment valuation of nearly $500 million. The investors included Benchmark Capital, ZhenFund, Sequoia China, Tencent and other top VC funds and technology company entrepreneurs from China and the United States.

Conclusion: The potential of the Agent track is verified

AI Agents are moving from concept to large - scale application, becoming the "super interface" connecting users with the complex digital world.

As a star product in this track, Manus has achieved a rapid increase in valuation in just 2 years. Its acquisition by Meta for billions of dollars confirms the explosive potential of the general Agent track.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Zhidx" (ID: zhidxcom), author: Chen Junda, editor: Li Shuiqing. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.