Manus announced the resumption of its independent operations.

Manus's product iteration speed has reached an all-time high, and new innovative achievements are about to be released.

According to Zhidx News on September 1, today, Manus, the hit general-purpose Agent product, announced the official resumption of independent operation. The three co-founders of Manus, namely CEO Xiao Hong, Chief Scientist Ji Yichao, and Product Partner Zhang Tao, will continue to lead the company, and revealed that innovative achievements are about to be launched.

Manus's official announcement post (Source: X)

It announced on social platform X that Manus will continue to expand the capability boundary of general-purpose AI agents, help users handle complex tasks, and achieve higher efficiency in daily work and life.

The three key priorities in the next stage are further integrating into users' daily work workflows, interacting more directly with the surrounding real world, and taking more proactive actions on behalf of users.

Zhang Tao stated on social platform X that today, Manus is independent again, and the entire team has rekindled their passion. Now Manus's product iteration speed has reached an all-time high, and the upcoming launch will be the most ambitious product project since its establishment.

Post by Zhang Tao, Product Partner of Manus (Source: X)

This means that the multi-billion-dollar acquisition of Manus by Meta that caused a sensation in the AI industry has officially come to an end.

In March 2025, Manus made its debut with the title of "the world's first general-purpose AI agent". The agent it developed can independently browse websites through cloud virtual machines to perform complex tasks such as booking tickets, analyzing stocks, and conducting in-depth research. It gained widespread attention across the internet upon release, with its invitation code extremely hard to obtain.

Demo of Manus's agent operating the computer independently (Source: Manus)

The rapidly rising Manus was acquired by Meta in December 2025.

On December 30, 2025, Meta officially announced the acquisition of Butterfly Effect, the parent company of Manus. According to LatePost, the transaction scale reached tens of billions of US dollars. ZhenFund, a long-term investor of Butterfly Effect, stated that this is the third largest acquisition since Meta's establishment, with the cost second only to WhatsApp and Scale AI.

According to the original plan, Manus will be integrated into Meta's consumer and enterprise product ecosystem. Founder Xiao Hong joined Meta as Vice President, and 100 members of the team joined the Singapore organization of Meta Superintelligence Lab (MSL).

The turning point of the incident occurred in April this year, when the Office of the Foreign Investment Security Review Working Mechanism under China's National Development and Reform Commission called off the acquisition. It announced at that time that it would make a decision to prohibit investment in the "foreign capital acquisition of the Manus project" in accordance with the law, and require the parties to cancel the acquisition transaction.

In accordance with the relevant provisions of Article 12 of the Measures for the Security Review of Foreign Investment, the completed transaction shall dispose of the equity or assets within a time limit and restore the state before the implementation of the investment. This is the regulatory background for a series of arrangements mentioned in the user's letter, and the resumption of independent operation essentially implements the requirement of "restoring the original state".

The Office of the Foreign Investment Security Review Working Mechanism under the National Development and Reform Commission made a decision to prohibit investment in the Manus project (Source: National Development and Reform Commission)

From June to July this year, multiple foreign media cited people familiar with the matter as reporting that Manus's previous investors, including Tencent, ZhenFund, and HSG (formerly Sequoia Capital China), are discussing completing the equity repurchase of Manus's parent company Butterfly Effect at the valuation of 2 billion US dollars (about 13.6 billion RMB) at the time of Meta's acquisition, and Tencent is expected to acquire the largest number of shares, but will remain a minority shareholder.

Subsequently, on August 12, Manus released *A Letter to Manus Users*, announcing that it will soon resume operation in the form of an independent company. As part of resuming independent operation and complying with regulatory requirements in specific jurisdictions, the data generated by some users on or after the date of Meta's acquisition on December 29, 2025 will be deleted in late August. As compensation, Manus will not charge affected users during the backup period, and will issue a "Return Reward" after the data is restored.

Manus's experience in the past few months has been full of ups and downs.

A person familiar with the matter revealed to the UK's *Financial Times* that Manus's performance has been growing rapidly since it was acquired by Meta. Now Manus's annualized revenue run rate has climbed to the range of 400 million to 500 million US dollars (about 2.7 billion to 3.4 billion RMB), while this figure was only 100 million US dollars (about 680 million RMB) when Meta acquired Manus.

Now that Manus has resumed independent operation, it remains unknown whether it can continue to maintain its growth momentum and replicate the phenomenal highlight at the beginning of its launch.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Zhidx" (ID: zhidxcpm), written by Cheng Xi, edited by Xin Yuan, and authorized for release by 36Kr.